I felt the need to get out and celebrate the two-month birthday of my new titanium hip joint, so I finally made the effort to persuade a couple of my skeptical in-house Wuxi cuisine know-it-alls (my wife and her daughter) to vet some of the dishes there. I had only been to Taste of Jiangnan a couple of times solo to check out the Wuxi-style wontons and a noodle soup, but those plus the photos posted by hyerbowler above convinced me there was something real there. It might have something to do with the fact that Taste of Jiangnan’s chef hails from Ju Ju’s ancestral village in Wuxi (and her own cooking is heavily informed by Wuxi style), but she and hew daughter were wowed by the experience.
We had:
Spicy Eggplant with Pork
Traditional Tofu Soup (Jiangnan doufu hua)
Wuxi Spare Ribs
Sweet and Sour Steamed Yellowfish
Femented Glutinous Rice Soup (Jiuniang yuanzi)
The eggplant dish was as good (if not as spicy) as any Sichuanese version of this dish I’ve had, slightly sweeter and more multi-dimensional.
From its Chinese name and appearance, I expected the “traditional tofu” so to be something fiery like doufu nao, but it was far subtler, with the freshness of the creamy tofu really coming through.
The Wuxi-style spare ribs were up to this dish’s fame (it’s all but synymous with Wuxi). It’s really a local version of “sweet and sour pork” wth the sweetness provided by rock sugar and the sour from Zhenjiang vingegar. My wife found it even better than her own version, a rare admission.
The whole steamed yellowfish (a. k. a. Yellow Croaker) is another sweet-and-sour dish, with a lighter sauce. They also offer a sea bass version of the dish, which you might consider ordering if you have the Gueilao Fear of Fish Bones (as I do). Overall, though, it was worth picking out the few stray tiny bones.
The Fermented Glutenous Rice Soup is a favorite dessert of my wife’s. I declined, not liking its sweetness (or the sweetness of almost any dessert) but noticed theat the two women finihed it off with alacrity.
