Hunan Restaurant-Mattoon, IL (supporting menu variety)

I'm enjoying the recent discussions vis a vis ethnic restaurant menus....thought I'd relate a li'l Christmas Eve eve tale:

Mattoon, IL's olde downetowne: Hunan Restaurant(I've written of it before, but the prior posts are buried in forum detritus)

as is our want this trip down for the holiday we flipped the proverbial coin whether to "dine" at the Long Dong Silver's/A&W oder our favorite "secret" Chinese-American restaurant. Hunan won out.

Most people wouldn't like it...that's a given. The way it shines in my mind is a conflation of the places my opa took me when I was little, the cheesy/not cheesy Asian decor---teak bas-reliefs, lanterns lit purple, red, and white, goldfish, buddhas, christmas trees, lazy susans, et al.

Our beloved, forever welcoming, lopsided-beehive-adorned waitress(and possibly chef?) is the roseate turnip garnish atop my egg foo young. She's truly great.

fresh-made hot n sour more xiaoxing than soup served in delicate demitasses goes a looooong way

that's hospitality

to the point...

I was all set to order my usual governor's(nee' gong pao) chicken(I've tried other items, but I REALLY like their interpretation...it's not kung pao-y at all, funnily enough...)

hey!

they had a one sheet detailing 12 or thirteen new dishes: Hunan specialties, seafood...um...Mattoon! yikes!, some "Thai"...yikes again!

heya!

our thinking went along these lines:

most "Chinese" restaurants in downstate Illinois are buffets catering to plain palates

Hunan Restaurant offers the ubiquitous aforementioned(I don't partake...I've scanned the steam tables and...um...not for me), but happily delivers the menu during peak sweet n sour chicken/eggroll hours...

we love this restaurant, we're always happy to see it survive in a wasteland of ethnic mediocrity, we love our waitress/chef and her soused soups

let's this time forgo our favorites and support the new items

clams(I know! Live Dangerously!) in black bean sauce
Hunan beef and chile

both respectable interpretations verging on the sweet(like everything else we've tried there)

my beef tender/light kou gan...and moderately spicy...a surprise here

clams in shell enrobed in a skein of brown sauce bedazzled with fermented black beans

and the most elaborate carrot, scallion, onion, pea, orange, flower sculpture I have ever seen in person
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nothing mindblowing
but, I sure as hell enjoy supporting this...sigh...ever-empty restaurant on a broken-down block of desultory downtown Mattoon...Home to a NEW MARTINI BAR! (we didn't go)

well there's also a great old skool used bookstore just around the corner(not the -crap- store in the middle of the block, but the one towards the end)

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so Mattoon keeps up with the Charleston joneses as it's sister town now boasts Nyro's Gyros in a hardly-converted Wendy's and a soon-to-open Thai restaurant(in a former Chinese buffet, 'natch)

my vote's with the former not least of which cuz I learned of two apparently-superb butcher shops that I must try next trip