[Hanzhou restaurant]

Wow, very nice pictures ! And nice comment. Me and my staff love them. I hope I can have the permission to post your comments on my website and our store board.

We had two chefs in the kitchen that day. This one on the picture are the person who is responsible for making noodles, such as how to make it smooth and tender, how to make it crunch, how to make it chewing, or how to make it has more flavor inside the noodle. Another younger one is doing the cooking, who didn't come out to take picture. His master is the Principle and director of Cooking School in China who had cooked food for central government's top leader including Deng, Xiao Ping. He and his investors is planning to purchase a big restaruant in China town. They had a target now. You guys probably know that restaurant too if I tell you the name. But I will keep it as secret for now. I will let you guys know first once it announce the acquisition.

You see, we are acdemic and we are in the process of hiring and trainning workers to make high quality dumplings and buns. Making juicy buns is a complex and skillful procedure, much more trouble than making normal dumplings. I personally prefer our flavor than our competitor. Not so much suger and oil, our meat has the fresh delicious taste of meat itself. And, We'll put more juice inside the buns as you wish.

Helen

A mob of us descended on Zhi Wei Guan for dim sum on Sunday. The blue awning still says Zhi Wei Guan, and that's the easiest way to find it, so I'm going to call it that for now!

A little googling reveals that Zhi Wei Guan is also the name of a well-established restaurant in Hangzhou, so I'm guessing that's its name, but they might just say "Hangzhou restaurant" to English-speakers. That said, I might just start calling it the Magic Kingdom of Dough, as advertised in the window. 

And we did indeed have our share of dough, mostly in noodles, a little in dumpling wrappers. We erred in not trying some of the breads, but we'll rectify this soon enough...

We started with cold Sesame Noodles

Then two types of "juicy buns" (Xiao Long Bao.) One had pork; another had pork, shrimp and mushroom filling.

I liked the flavor of the pork buns (didn't try the shrimp version) and overall liked this preparation, although the wrappers are a little thicker than I see as ideal. That said, they held-together, which is not always the case with the more paper-thin, delicate wrappers at Dim Sum Garden. So on one hand I'd like them to be thinner, on the other I appreciate that I was actually able to get the soup-filled dumping into my mouth...  There's not quite as much "soup" inside as at Dim Sum Garden either, but still overall, the had good flavor and were quite enjoyable.

"Stir Fried Ground Meat in Chinese Chili Sauce"  (Zha Jiang Mian)

I liked this a lot. This dish is very good a few doors down at Nan Zhou, and Szechuan Tasty House offers something like it, but this one certainly ranks up there as one of the better ones.

I'm not exactly sure of what these were called on the menu - was it the "Emerald Shrimp Pork Water Chestnut dumpling"?  Andrew? Katie? 

Hangzhou Duck Noodle

Intense, sticky, sweet sauce, tender duck, noodles: automatically a new favorite thing to eat.  I was caught dragging my finger through the sauce left on the place a few times.

Lamb in Oyster sauce - at least I think that's what it was... it's the only lamb I saw on the menu, although this didn't seem like any oyster sauce I'd ever had.

Whatever it was, it was quite delicious. The only downsides were that it was a very small bowl, really maybe three or 4 inches on a side, and the lamb was very boney, so there was not a ton of meat  to be extracted. But what there was, was very good.

Pork Tongue with Chinese Herb Sauce

I liked this a little better when it was not in a noodle soup, but the tongue itself was very good.  And I might have just been getting tired of the noodle soups... maybe it's fine this way!

Pork Stomach Noodle in Ginger Scallion Sauce

It's dangerous game trying to get pork "belly" rather than pork "stomach" when the translations are a little vague...  So this was indeed the stomach, not the fatty meaty belly.  But in a way I'm glad we finally got this, I'd been wondering if I'd like it.  And it was OK, not my favorite thing in the world to eat and I doubt I'd order it again, but I'd eat it if the situation arose.

Sweet Soup with Osmanthus Flower

I'm normally not a big fan of these dessert soups, but I loved this one. There were fresh lychee, tapioca pearls, some sticky dumplings filled with black sesame paste, and the sweet fragrant petals of Osmanthus flowers.  Really very nice.

I don't think we succeeded in getting a full overview of their offerings, but we got a nice taste of several of them, and I generally liked what we had.  It's different from most of the other places in town, and has a few more things that bear investigating.  How did we not get the "Pet's Ear Shaped mini dough soup"?!?! The house "super bun"?  the "Yin-Yang bread"?!?!

Oh, wait, I know, let's go back!

The staff was very nice, especially in the face of our suddenly taking over almost the whole place and clamoring for food.  The chef even came out at the end and took a picture with us, so I guess we didn't annoy them too much!

three of our crowd missed the picture, out on a hunt for cash, or behind the camera, but this was most of the gang. See you all back there soon to try the rest of the menu!

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[Hanzhou restaurant]

Thank you guys for coming to my restaurant. I didn't expect our restuarant already get your attention.

Our restuarant is named " Zhi Wei Guan". We purchased this restaurant from "Dumpling House" which closed door after only operated for 4 months. Their dumplings was good, we have some customers come back for their dumplings. However, it takes more than just good food to run a restaurant. We originally was trying to run a restaurant with full menu to offering Hangzhou and yangzi river south surrounded area type of food. Because we miss our hometown's food so much. I have friends who live outside philly told me that they are rarely come to China town now because there are nothing new anymore, only Cantoness food which are too heavy and strong flavor. With more people come to US from northern part of China, we think we will have a niche market. However, our shareholders had different opinions at beginning, some worried no body here knows about Hangzhou Shanghai food, and thought we should keep some Cantoness food on menu to get some business from China town people, which mostly are Cantoness. It turned out to be a very bad idea. It caused seperation of shareholders after a few weeks. Then the shareholders still remain at the restauant agreed that we should following the original idea, stick to Hangzhou style food. I haven't been staying in China town for long, but I felt people are quit close minded, not many people would even want to try. Though we still didn't get customer within China town, we start to get students from Universities, and people from surround area of Philly, they are excited to know they can have food from Northern part of China, and we have customers come to our place and finish last drop of the noodle soup or wonton soup. However, they normally only visit China town at weekends. So It is very difficult to keep the full menu. We had to throw away tons of materials we prepared for the menu. We opened doors since late March, but after test the market for one and half month, during the period of time we closed and opened, opened and closed and doing lots of adjustment, then we got suggestion from expert that we should focus on our dough products. Offering different food style, although are very good, will not insure a restuarnt to survive. But offering some wide accepted food such as dumpling and noodles but doing it better will helps. So we announced official open on May 17th as Noodle and dumpling House. Though we didn't expect to get lots of customer, but for the first three weeks, we are start to breakeven.

People likes Noodles and dumplings, but Cantoness people are not good at them at all. It has been wide accept as wonton noodle here in US. But People of Northern part of China never eat wonton and noodle that way. Both wonton and noodle lost its own character and flavor. Noodles and dumplings are the popular food of Northern part of China. In some provinces people consume more dough foods such as noodles dishes than rice dishes. Dough foods is a big part of food in China. Dough food is an art too. Dough like the clay and can be made into all different shape and flavor, the change is endless. We will make more different noodles and dumpling with Hangzhou style, less suger, less salt, less grease, but with the character of fresh, light, graceful, and natural. See my other post about Hangzhou food.

If we would be able to survive and hopefully profitable, and we will offer dishes other than noodles and dumpling. Hangzhou has 36 famous traditional dishes including tea shrimp, Dong Po Meat, West Lake Sour Fish which has stories that can be traced back as far as thousand years ago. And 48 new named delicious Hangzhou dishes.

So as always, " If you don't like our food, only let me know; if you like our food, let your friends know."

Thank you again for visiting our restaurant. I hope you won't see us run out of business as several previous owners of this location the next time you visit us.

By the way, every Tuesday is our Sunday. So please don't visit us on this day.

Thanks again.

Helen

The owner said that her restaurant opened May 17, so if you ate there before that, this is a completely different restaurant. Trust me, the soup dumplings are the bomb.

I actually remember that discussion and I tried the dumplings when the restaurant was in its previous incarnation, and I agree, the place was mediocre. But now it is much more interesting with excellent soup dumplings and the restaurant is quite devoted to the Hanzhou cuisine.

To make things more confusing, I checked the restaurant's business card, and the previous name ("Zhi Wei Guan") is exactly what the owner wrote on it. So go figure.

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[Various Chinese cuisines]

I am so agree with you! Back to thousand years ago, in Song dynasty, the greatest poet Su Dong Po, has already praised hangzhou food in his poem: " No other place in the world has better banquet like in Hangzhou." Hangzhou is known to be the Paradise on Earth among almost all Chinese people, not just because it's beautiful silk and west lake, also because rich soil land and soft water system that grow delicious food. there is no any other place in China like Zhejiang Province, expecially Hangzhou, has always been prosperity, rich, plenty of delicious food, even when the whole country was suffering from poverty and went through difficult time. It has another name of the "Hometown of Fish and Rice", In Chinese “鱼米之乡"， Read as "Yu Mi Zhi Xiang". I need to mention Dong Po Meat got the name after Su Dong Po.

When Hangzhou was the capital city of anxient China for several dynasties, Canton, which now is famous for its cantoness food, was just a very remote place, where the center govenment of anixient China Empire exile prisoners , crimials, or peole who would not being accepted by the society there for life time sentence, in chinese “流放”， read as " liu fang". That's why even today, most Cantoness people insist to only speak Cantoness language while most people of all other provinces can speak Chinese Mandarin. I saw a post about Cantoness food here, it introduced how cantoness food got into United States. A good article, only one thing I could not agree with is that, "even Chinese people think Cantoness food is best ". I guess lots of Chinese people from Northern China or East Coast China will not agree with that. And because it is very difficult to get visa to US, so lots of real good chef in China would not be able to come US cook the authentic Chinese food other than Cantoness food.

I am openning a small restaurant in Philadelphia, PA offering Hangzhou and Yangzi River South area food, unfortunetly, we have to start from small, currently only offering noodles and dumplings. Because it is very difficult to get the exactly the same materials we use in China, we have do lots of experiment to make sure we handle the american materials right. For example, when broil duck, our original receip is need to cook one and half hour, but here we cook the duck for about 45 mininutes and the duck meat already start to melt. Also we need to figure out what herb to use to take away the unpleasent smell of the chicken. Traditional chinese herb would not enough to take away that smell. It was a surprise to find out that there was certain herb that US people use does a better job to process those Chicken. Of course only delicate nose and tongue can tell the difference.

Hangzhou food use less salt, less grease, less sugar, more natural material and vegetable, which is consistent with health requirment of mordern life. Hangzhou has always been a prosperity place, not starving people hunger for heavy oil type of food, so the food is just like the silk, which hangzhou is famous for, fresh, light, graceful, and natural.

When I visited China in 1987, Hangzhou was the place where I had the best food, with Wuxi also memorable for the great Wuxi Spareribs I had. If Hangzhou is not a top Chinese city for fine food, which ones are?

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