Harmony Chinese: Another "You Could Do Worse" Option

Finally got around to trying this place last night. Been meaning to for a while. Out west on Archer 6500's, I'm a little surprised that the menu didn't have a "mowimmy po polsku" section on it. It's standard Ameri-Chinese in all its glory (if there is any glory in that. There must be, since these places are all over the city) Big fish tank, lots of reds in the room, Asian inspired prints on all the walls (our table was under a painting of about 20 giant pandas doing different things: eating, climbing, frolicking etc.) When we were seated, we were immediately greeted with a teapot full of hot tea. Nice touch on a coldish night where the snow was melting into slosh everywhere.

Combo App for two:
2 egg rolls
2 fried shrimpies
2 bbq spares
2 beef skewers

The egg rolls were not one of few normal mass produced variety often found throughout Chicagoland. Leads me to believe they were made in house. Lots of ground pork in there. I was pleasantly surprised. The mustard was for real too. Right up your sinus.

Didn't try a shrimpie, those were for the Mrs.

Spares. Standard. Real porky flavor. Tender with a mildly caramelized crust. More than likely oven steamed, and then thrown under a salamander for crisping, and then slathered in sauce too sweet for words, and then back under the salamander.

Beef skewers. A tad on the salty side, but actually decent. Really tender, but had a nice chew. These were plated too close to the spares, so the sauce overlapped. If these skewers were supposed to have any flavor other than beef and salt, the BBQ sauce that overlapped from the spares killed it off. Scraping the sauce off was futile. The sauce flavor lingered.

Crab Rangoon (not pictured)
Well, these were made in house, and they overcompensated their refusal to use real crab by overusing real surimi. These things were filled to ther brim with cream cheese, and the unmistakable flavor of real fake crab. I think the order came with 6, and we dusted off three, but both of our app plates had little mounds of cream chease and real fake crab that were scooped out. These were bad if you're not really into surimi. Don't get me started on fake meats...just...don't. I'm ok with most crab rangoons, and yes I know the lion's share of them are made with fake crab. But those are usually balanced so, you don't smell surimi when you bite in, or break them open. These things were LOADED with bad quality fake crab. They just weren't our thing.

The mains:
The menu was pretty standard, there was a special Thai section that had a few things that were basically Pad Thai, and Thai style fried rice. Though intriguing, we passed. We opted for a few standards -

Exhibit A:
General's Chicken.

This was the sweet, sticky, vinegary, "spicy" mess we all know about. The chicken chunks were actually good. Nicely fried, still juicy. Sauce was a little too sweet for my likes. Had better, had worse.

House Special Lo Mein.

Good veggies, still nicely crisp. But, um.. RAMEN Noodles. UGH. They offered a chow fun on the menu, but as I've come to figure out in this city, Chow Fun has a tedency to mean spaghetti noodle. When I go to an Asian Grocery, Chow Fun noodles are always packaged sheets or cut flat white wide noodles in the fridge section. So I asked. The server explained that Chow Fun here was just like a spaghetti noodle. I should have known that lo mein was gonna turn out to be ramen, but oh well. The veggies were decent, the chicken was decent, the shrimp was decent, but the beef was sliced stew meat that was precooked, and just thrown into the wok. It was gray, and had no texture, kinda jello-y. If I had a restaurant, I would not be "proud" to serve that. That is an obvious corner cutting move, and in my opinion, it ruined the food. I'd rather have been charged more in order to get edible food. It was served in a cornstarchy gravy that was pretty inoffensive. The sauce looked like it was gonna be the standard glop, but, it wasn't THAT bad.

Mu Shu Chicken.

Lotsa cabbage in there, and not too much of the cloud ear or wood ear that usually makes mu shu have that smoky flavor profile. It was just ok. Not BAD, not GOOD.

All in all, a pretty average Ameri-Chinese meal. The first page of the menu is a paragraph about how they will prepare anything to your liking if they possibly can. If I were to go back, I'd be armed with a list of "how I'd likes*" and see how they do.

Harmony Chinese Restaurant
6525 West Archer Avenue, Chicago, IL 60638-2401
(773) 586-0777‎

*No cornstarch, add any fresh chilies if avail, extra sesame oil," just for starters.