Chinese in the DC/DMV area?

I have been looking for new Chinese places to visit and someone mentioned Northwest Chinese Food in College Park so I met my brother and checked it out. It was outstanding! I am no expert but it was seemingly authentic Chinese food! We started w Cumin Lamb Homemade Bread/Rou Jia Mo. the lamb was simply delicious, loved this dish. The Black Vinegar Peanuts were good not great. Tough to finish many w just chopsticks…
Then we split the Red Oil Sesame Dumplings, these were outstanding!
Finally I had the Oil Seared Knife Cut Noodles w tomato and egg. Very good! Will try it w minced pork next time, that looked good as well!
My other long time favorite is A&J in Annandale. I had the braised egg with pork for a starter, then I got the Szechuan wonton in Red sauce and the Suan La Mian/Thin Noodles in A&J special hot sauce. I probably shouldn’t admit to this but I like pouring my wontons in red sauce over the top of the Suan La Mian, it makes the two dishes even better as a combo. I also tried the Xiao Long Bao which was ok, not great.
Both places were eat in and seemingly doing well.
Any suggestions for Chinese in the DMV area would be very welcome!

Now let me see how my photo enclosure skills are working…
Here are photos of the menu at A&J, followed by the braised egg with pork, the wontons and Suan La Mian and finally the Xiao Long Bao.




6 Likes

Well, my A&J photos are out of order but they are easy to identify. Here are the photos from Northwest Chinese in College Park.
In no particular order our dishes were:
Spicy Beef Soup w Knife Cut Noodles, really nicely spiced dish and the beef was excellent.
Cumin Lamb Homemade Bread/Rou Jia Mo, the lamb was simply delicious, loved this dish.
The Black Vinegar Peanuts were good not great.
Red Oil Sesame Dumplings, these were outstanding!
Oil Seared Knife Cut Noodles w tomato and egg.



5 Likes

I haven’t had Chinese food in ages, was all the good places seem to have moved to the suburbs. I used to love Full Kee in Chinatown – the Hong Kong style noodle soup, usually with duck or shrimp dumplings. A while back I went to the one in Wheaton. Is it still there?

I need to get back on track. What are some other places you like. Anything in Bethesda?

1 Like

A&J has two branches and one is on Rockville Pike. It is consistently good and I think that knowing what to order would make it even better. I enjoy Chinese food enough to know the basics but I frequently want to grab dishes that are going by my table because I don’t know what they are and think they look great. Both A&J and Northwest Chinese have deep menus w a lot of dishes I wish I had time to try.

Is the Super Bowl Noodle House in Rockville still there? I always loved the place but I haven’t been to the area in a few years.

I had never even heard of Super Bowl Noodle and it is less than a mile from Bob’s Shanghai 66, a place I have been intending to visit for some time. I checked out Super Bowl’s menu, the Lamb Hot Pot sounds really good but if you have two or three toppings it could cost you $30+! Ouch.
The Dai Lu Noodle Soup with pork and shrimp is just $11, I may go by to try that for lunch sometime. Problem is that Rockville is chockablock full of speed cameras and I usually get a very nice picture of my car mailed to me a week or two after I visit Rockville. Consistently. And I am not a horrible driver! Really! My car is just painted to look fast.
Still trying to figure out what Manried Corples Beef Slices are. Maybe it is a mis-translation of Married Couples? And what is Yu Shiang Chicken/Beef like? Yusheng fish is the closest dish I can find and it is served raw…
I like the dishes I have never heard of.

Ziv, you’ve packed a lot into your reply and I want to address at least a few of your comments.

I’m sorry to say that lamb is the most expensive of red meats. Any dish made with it is likely to cost more. It’s also the main reason you see so many more sheep being farmed these days. It’s the same story with duck - at least a tiny bit of that money goes to farmers.

The Super Bowl almost specializes in unknown dishes; cold spicy tripe salads and soups with bits of bread instead of noodles are perfect examples. Once, I took me sister there - she was a police officer in Manhattan Chinatown for many years and prided herself on food knowledge. She just sat in shock and watched me polish off a plate of cold tripe.

“Corples” may be a mis-translation or just a misspelling. And finally, learning to drive around those speed cameras is a task, but worth it if the reward is Rockville cuisine.

3 Likes

Haven’t been yet, but I have plans to go to Peter Chang’s joint- Mama Chang’s- in Fairfax City sometime in the next couple of weeks. I thought I’d try lunch and maybe a dinner. I’ll report back afterwards.

The last place I went and have to several times is Hong Kong Pearl Seafood Restaurant in the Seven Corners area for dim sum and then some. I LOVE the carts. I love the extras. I love it all. The air can seem intimidating because the place is PACKED most times. But it has never taken me more than 10-15 minutes to get a table. And then I get to stuff my face.

5 Likes

*wait, not air. Ugh, stupid autocorrect.

1 Like

Peter Chang’s main place “Q” is in Bethesda just around the corner from the metro. Chang, BTW, is one of five finalists for the James Beard US Chef of the Year award. It’s already quite an honor but would be super if he won. I believe that would make him the only chef in history to have won best chef honors on a national level in both China and the US, and probably one of the few to have won in any two countries.

AFAIK Full Key is long gone everywhere.

4 Likes

Thanks! I’ll give it a try.

Too bad about full kee. Loved the broth in their soups. Who else has that?

1 Like

The two places in DC you should know about for Chinese food are both in Glover Park and both are satellite locations of places in Maryland/VA.

The first is Eerkin’s which is the best Uyghur food in the area. Go for the chopped fried soman, IDK how it’s listed on the menu, but sometimes called ‘ding ding’ you can ask for it like that they will know what you mean. Off menu, you can ask for the spicy version. Also the eggplant salad and the lamb skewers.

The other place is Dumplings and Beyond which is an offshoot of China Bistro in Rockville. Dongbei style dumplings, go for the fish and cilantro and the beef with onion. The rest of the menu is avoidable Chinese-American with a smattering of a few authentic dishes like casseroles, bok choy, scrambled egg and tomato which are probably worth trying.

2 Likes

Excellent. How does Eerkin compare to Dolan in Cleveland Park – if you’ve been?

NW Chinese is great! Other places to try: Reren Lamen in Chinatown or Lamen in Georgetown for Chinese Ramen. Mama Chang’s in Fairfax. Da Hong Pao for cantonese and dimsum. Chinaboy carryout for rice noodle dishes and rice noodles to cook at home. They sell rice noodles to chinese restaurants in the area. Chinese groceryL Great wall in Merrifield. Actually, chinatown express is good for a super divey kind of place…and they make noodles and dumplings in the window.

It sounds like a lot of options, but I still can’t find good Chinese food in Dupont…I have to go a mile to Isshin in Admo or Da Hong Pao in Logan Circle. Don’t follow me to isshin…I think it’s just a “me” thing…my friends don’t like it. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Oh, also, House of Dynasty is really good Americanized Chinese food…it’s near Hayfield HS (near Franconia). They do good business, especially around the xmas holidays.

1 Like

A small group of us form CH visited Dolan and thought it was pretty bad. Eerkin is the best right now and is worthy of some praise, though there are so many items I haven’t tried. A couple of other very good Uyhgur places have failed. I do not know if there is a difference between the various locations of Eerkin. The one in Fairfax is excellent, and there is another serious Uyghur in Fairfax called Kirirokan.

2 Likes

I got back to A&J last week mainly for my favorite dish there, Braised Pork w greens and hard boiled egg. I really like this dish and get it every time I go. The pork is very rich and the greens and egg give it more depth.
I also got the Suan La Mian/Noodles w A&J Hot and Sour Sauce. Good, not great but I combined it with another dish, Spicy Wonton w Red Szechuan Sauce, and the combo was really good!
Finally, I tried the Xiao Long Bao again and oddly enough got the same mediocre result.
So the Braised Pork w Egg and the Spicy Wontons are the stars of the show. The waitresses were very good as usual.




4 Likes

In DC Chinatown, go to China Boy.

Stick with the rice noodles, freshly made. Take some home as well.

Pass on the dim sum offerings.

3 Likes

Tom Sietsema of the Washington Post raved about Dolan, which was just more confirmation of his DC parochialism and preference for “nice” restaurants. My wife and I agreed that Dolan was the only Uyghur restaurant we’ve eaten at that was actually bad.

1 Like

I share your assessment of Sietsema. Or Tim Carman, as you may have guessed.

1 Like