Looking for Kung Pao (in all the wrong places)

So today I had another bad Kung Pao Chicken. I didn't hate it, but it certainly wasn't Kung Pao.
For me, there are two ur-KPCs: The recipe in Fuschia Dunlop's "Land of Plenty", and the one I had as a kid at the long-gone Mandarin Village at Dundee and Sanders in Northbrook. The Mandarin Village version was oilier than Dunlop's, but the flavor of hers matches that of the memory of my youth. All that's in those (in terms of visible ingredients) is chicken, peanuts, dried peppers and scallion, cut into identical-sized cubes the diameter of the scallions. The recipe says it should be served withvegetables.

But I can't find it in nearby restaurants. I can probably get it in Chinatown, but that's not a weekday lunch break kind of thing.

Aside from not getting the flavor right, there's a multitude of sins committed against the recipe.
The worst, in my opinion, is lack of finesse: chicken is in large, floppy pieces, vegetables in random-sized pieces.
The other biggie is throwing the garden at it: I can enjoy a little (red) bell pepper, carrot, or onion, maybe water chestnut (all redundant to the peanuts, if you ask me), but they should be small cubes, cooked crisp-tender. But there's no reason for mushrooms. And absolutely no excuse for including celery. That's the worst. It's awful.
A bland, gloppy, cornstarchy, brothy sauce is another problem.

So is there any hope for a decent cheap Chinese lunch in the NW burbs? Some soup, an egg roll, rice and real Kung Pao Chicken?