good Ameri-Chinese at Myle Asian Cuisine on Irving Park

I liked my lunch at Myle as much as anywhere I can think of in Chicago serving the same style of food. Szechwan pork was full of crisp, fresh vegetables and a nicely spiced brown gravy with minimal grease and corn starch. The pork itself was lean, tender, and quite flavorful. This is a good stop for a quick, healthful lunch in the neighborhood, and it's probably going to be my go-to Ameri-Chinese delivery choice from now on.

Szechwan Pork:


Myle Asian Cuisine:



1465 W. Irving Park
773-281-2555

Kenny, I order from there from time to time, as it's a short walk from home. Based on the menu I think the owners might be ethnically Chinese from Vietnam, which I understand is common enough. The Cantonese stuff can be pretty good (S&P shrimp or octopus, for example). Viet not so much. I ordered the pho for the first time last night. Very disappoining even starting with low expectations. NB: this is not pure 50's American Chinese like Wah Sun or Orange Garden. It's more like a middling place on Argyle -- toned down versions of Cantonese and Viet things, plus a selection of the typical Ameri-Chinese for the neighborhood. Around the corner on Ashland is Young's, a more Americanized Chinese place that does quite a good job with that genre and has a good number of seafood options. I just can't get that excited about Amricanized Chinese. It's the vegetables, mostly. I don't require yellow chives or ong choy, but no bok choy or Chinese broccoli is sort of a dealbreaker.

Yes, definitely some Vietnamese leanings here, though based on the menu I'm looking at, I'd say over 90% of it is standard Ameri-Chinese. Maybe 10 dishes with Vietnamese leanings, and about 100 Orange Garden-like classics. Lucky me, I like bell peppers and western broccoli

Kennyz wrote:Lucky me, I like bell peppers and western broccoli

By the light of Carol Channing's ghost, do I spy the dreaded baby corn? ~shudder~

Baby corn scares the bejabbers out of me........

G Wiv wrote:

Kennyz wrote:Lucky me, I like bell peppers and western broccoli

By the light of Carol Channing's ghost, do I spy the dreaded baby corn? ~shudder~

Baby corn scares the bejabbers out of me........

actually, it was more like toddler corn. Significantly larger than the typical version, but just as crunchy and satisfying

Grown from the can no doubt.

JeffB wrote:I just can't get that excited about Amricanized Chinese. It's the vegetables, mostly. I don't require yellow chives or ong choy, but no bok choy or Chinese broccoli is sort of a dealbreaker.

I'm with you, Jeff - but the real dealbreaker (which I have, fortunately, yet to see in the Chicago area) is subbing little crescents of American celery for bok choy. Bleah. Fortunately, it looks like these folks exercise good judgement in that department.

I'm semi-saddened to see this. I believe this was recently New Life. When I worked in the area they were originally on Waveland between Broadway and Halsted but were forced out of the space. It took them forever to open the new place on Irving. The woman that ran the place was extremely nice. The food was some of the better quality Ameri-Cantonese. I'm sorry to see them out of business.

midas wrote:I'm semi-saddened to see this. I believe this was recently New Life. When I worked in the area they were originally on Waveland between Broadway and Halsted but were forced out of the space. It took them forever to open the new place on Irving. The woman that ran the place was extremely nice. The food was some of the better quality Ameri-Cantonese. I'm sorry to see them out of business.

yes, and when I first moved to Chicago, the space was N.N. Smokehouse. I knew nothing about BBQ at the time, but man that stuff tasted good.

I've given Myle two tries when I've spent the morning over coffee and laptop at Asado, and the place mystifies me. They can half do things right-- the corn-starch dusted chicken in some chicken basil fried rice dish I ordered was fried in an exemplary manner, tender and velvety. But somehow they just can't seem to make a whole dish work; the basil and every other flavor was smothered by the fried rice, which had no flavor beyond "fried," to the point that I had to bastardize it with the sweet sauce for the egg roll for it to have any flavor at all and to be able to choke it down. I forget what I had the other time but it was the same deal, what looked like it should have been a nice simple, flavorful plate of standard issue Chinese food was weirdly flavorless, which is really amazing considering how often even utter mediocrity in Chinese food is easy enough to scarf down. Given that there are 100 things on the menu, surely some of them are passable, but my experiences don't have me dying to go back, even when I find myself buzzed and ravenous at Asado.