fyi, if anyone is interested, there is post under the events calendar for a tofu tour at our new tofu facility.

quack quack!
kelly

Had a great lunch at Sun Wah a couple days ago. I seem to always go there with a few people and order a bunch of dishes to share, but I really enjoyed just getting a simple basic lunch by myself.

A big bowl of wonton and noodle soup with bbq pork hit the spot. I absolutely love the soups here - the broth is so rich and flavorful. The noodles have a nice chew to them and the wontons, while maybe not the absolute best I've had, definitely hit the spot. Geting 6-8 slices of bbq pork in there for $1 more ($4.50 w/o meat, $5.50 w/ meat) is a bonus. And also very importantly, the soup is served HOT, the way god intended.

While this bowl of soup probably would have been a perfectly acceptable lunch, I have little to no self control when it comes to Sun Wah, so an order of my all-time favorite egg rolls was also necessary. I have never experienced the cold-in-the-middle egg roll issue others have had - they are always hot and clearly fresh out of the fryer. The filling is great, with tons of meat and not too much cabbage (unlike most egg rolls), along with a big dollop of peanut butter.

One thing I did find a little funny was that when I ordered a diet coke with lemon, I was informed by the waitress that each slice of lemon is 25-cents extra. Has anyone ever experienced this before? Never in my life have I been charged for a lemon slice!

It was a very nice looking round slice, about 1/5 of a lemon, and quite...lemony-tasting - I guess it delivered everything I hoped for.

It doesn't really matter and definitely won't ever keep me from coming back to Sun Wah, but I just thought it was kind of a funny, odd-ball thing to charge extra for.

All in all a very successful lunch and came to $11.00 after tax, before tip.

DClose wrote:One thing I did find a little funny was that when I ordered a diet coke with lemon, I was informed by the waitress that each slice of lemon is 25-cents extra. Has anyone ever experienced this before? Never in my life have I been charged for a lemon slice!

It was a very nice looking round slice, about 1/5 of a lemon, and quite...lemony-tasting - I guess it delivered everything I hoped for.

LMAO! At least you enjoyed it but yes, that does seem very odd.

=R=

Yeah....I could tell from the waiter's sheepish expression that he knew how ridiculous what he was about to say was going to sound to me. But, rules are rules, I suppose.

I went to Sun-Wah over the weekend with a large group (we got the duck AND a pig, but more on that once I upload the pictures!) and one of my friends was wondering about the history of the building they're in because of all the skylights and he said he saw a trap door in the ceiling.

Anyone know what the story is?

abe_froeman wrote:I went to Sun-Wah over the weekend with a large group (we got the duck AND a pig, but more on that once I upload the pictures!) and one of my friends was wondering about the history of the building they're in because of all the skylights and he said he saw a trap door in the ceiling.

Anyone know what the story is?

Kelly said it was an old livery stable.

Thanks! Very helpful!

Abe, I love your user name! The sausage king of Chicago, right?

Yep!

Unfortunately, I got the spelling off some disreputable site, and I don't think it's supposed to have the "e", but at this point, I'm not changing it....maybe I can sweet talk an administrator into changing it for me so I won't lose my history.

When Sun Wah was first established in Chicago at it's old location, the current location on Broadway use to be a Maaco Auto Body Shop. In fact our family had 2 vehicles painted there. Best Maaco around because I knew of other body shops that would send cars there because it was cheaper to outsource the job to them and they did excellent work!

Cabbagehead and I hit Sun Wah on Saturday night (after cooking for Ronald McDonald House) and found the place rocking at 8:20 p.m. Despite the full house, we were seated fairly quickly and had a simple but wonderful meal of old faves combined with specials, now written on glass but backed (nostalgically for those of us who remember the old Argyle Street location) with white plastic plates: shredded duck with dried scallop soup and beef chow fun plus house-cured bacon with Chinese broccoli and spicy fried tofu cubes. As usual, we ordered too much food but managed to eat everything because it was just so delicious. If you haven't tried Sun Wah's house-made bacon stir fried with your choice of vegetable, get thee over there right away. The combination of salty, soft, fatty meat with the bitter crispness of the Chinese broccoli is just brilliant. I just finished lunch but could eat a big helping of that stuff right now!

We were headed to Nha Hang recently when my father noticed that we were close to Sun Wah and asked if we could go there instead. Sure, why not? We weren't sure when our last visit to Sun Wah was, but it predated Kelly's pregnancy and now she's toting a cute little peanut around with her.

With Kelly's recommendation we tried the tofu skin veggie rolls, filled with mushrooms. I really liked these. A vat of hot and sour soup was solid, and made for good leftovers (especially with a scoop of the shrimpy hot sauce, which I don't remember them having in the past). Spicy crispy tofu was exactly as advertised. The duck service was great, as always, but the skin could've been just a tad crispier. And, the last dish, perhaps the best of the night, was green beans with ground pork and black beans.

Great meal. We definitely won't wait as long before our next visit.

Ronna

Whenever I go to SunWah, I'm always so happy with the green veg dishes -with or without the house cured bacon. Always so simple yet just right.

And after REBs note, we headed up to SunWah to treat a work colleague from the UK ... The tofu skin rolls were so good ... And Kelly suggested stir fried bean sprouts as extra good today and she was so right. can you call bean sprouts succulent! These were.

We had such a feast ... With great leftovers for an office lunch as well and spent $20 each plus tip ... Unbeatable.

I just want to pop in and thank everyone for the recommendations in this thread. My boyfriend, two friends, and I decided to have a birthday dinner at Sun Wah about two weeks ago. I don't think I've stopped raving about the meal since then.

We chose the Peking duck dinner, which I can't recommend enough! I'm normally not a huge fan of duck, but the duck that was rolled out to us at Sun Wah was juicy and perfectly cooked. The salty, crispy skin complemented the fresh bao really well. I loaded up four sandwiches with duck, hoisin sauce, and julienne carrots and green onions. Which leads me to my only complaint: not enough hoisin and trimmings to go around! I was scraping the bottom of the hoisin sauce bowl for the last drops by the time I hit my fourth sandwich.

We ordered extra bao and I recommend any party over two people do the same, or there will be fighting for the last bun. Other than that, there was plenty of food to feed the four of us. We even had some leftover duck. By the time the duck fried rice and soup made it to the table I had retired from the meal, but everyone else seemed to enjoy them.

The price, as mentioned in this thread several times, is very reasonable. With the Peking duck, two extra orders of bao, an order of bok choy, and the tip, the meal totaled less than $20 per person. I was shocked at the price--in a good way. Our table (and my stomach!) was overburdened with food. Great experience overall.

Siun wrote:And after REBs note, we headed up to SunWah to treat a work colleague from the UK ... The tofu skin rolls were so good ... And Kelly suggested stir fried bean sprouts as extra good today and she was so right. can you call bean sprouts succulent! These were.

We had such a feast ... With great leftovers for an office lunch as well and spent $20 each plus tip ... Unbeatable.

Hi,

The Chang family tofu business not only makes tofu, they also sprout their own beans. Those bean sprouts have to be the freshest ones available in any restaurant.

Regards,

Admittedly, I have not read all 20 plus pages previous posts on this thread, so please pardon me if I am repeating a bit of information which may have appeared up-thread.

We had a family Mother's Day dinner at Sun Wah last evening. It was all as wonderful as one would expect.

Since we had ten people, we ordered two of the Beijing Duck services in addition to some other dishes. The waiter suggested a plate of duck noodles and a plate of duck fried rice instead of two plates duck fried rice and we took him up on this suggestion. All were glad we did.

The duck fried rice was very nice, but I preferred the duck noodles which were, I believe, chow mein noodles and had a bit of a crisp finish to them. At the end of the meal, I noticed that we were taking home some duck fried rice, but the duck noodles had vanished.

I don't know if it is necessary to order two Beijing Ducks to get to the "noodle option," but if the noodles are available to you, you may want to try them for something different. I think we will ask for them next time even if we are ordering one Beijing Duck.

By the way, it was a pleasure to introduce eight of the ten people at the table, who had never been there before, to this treasure of a restaurant. Everyone enjoyed it tremendously and I received many thanks for making the suggestion.

bw77 wrote:I don't know if it is necessary to order two Beijing Ducks to get to the "noodle option," but if the noodles are available to you, you may want to try them for something different. I think we will ask for them next time even if we are ordering one Beijing Duck.

It is not necessary to order two ducks to get the noodles. All you have to do is ask.

Thanks for reminding me that I haven't been to Sun Wah in a while and I need to get there stat!

The garlic eggplant dish was a hit as well.

The soft tofu from the family bean product concern is really swell in Sun Wah's ma po tofu. Nice ratio of vegetables and minced pork (the latter ingredient also standing out among other mpt's in town). I do wish the kitchen would lay hands on some prickly ash bud/Sichuan pepper and find the chile, but I am willing to accept the dish at Sun Wah for what I think it is: a Cantonese version of a Szechuan dish, not unlike the Japanese version of dan dan mien in its moderating approach while still leaving the dish recognizeable.

I continue to love Sun Wah, but I'm probably one more bad weekend visit away from avoiding Friday/Saturday evening visits completely. For the second time in just over a month, I made a weekend evening visit to dinner with friends and received very poor (essentially non-existent) service. I don't know if it's inadequate staffing (full on both visits) or something else, but 30 minutes for menus and over an hour for even appetizers, and having to beg for water? And 2+ hours to complete dinner - very similar to an early June visit too. At least the food was as good as always.

i've always been a fan of sun wah, but i had a disappointing take out meal last week. i ordered wide rice noodles with broccoli and chicken. the dish smelled like it had been sauteed in a wok that had previously had fish in it. and which hadn't been cleaned between uses. it was nasty and i couldn't eat it. and the other dish was a simple rice with roast duck and i believe should have come with a little dish of sauce to flavor the rice, but it didnt. all in all, not up to the standards i expected.

BR wrote:I continue to love Sun Wah, but I'm probably one more bad weekend visit away from avoiding Friday/Saturday evening visits completely. For the second time in just over a month, I made a weekend evening visit to dinner with friends and received very poor (essentially non-existent) service. I don't know if it's inadequate staffing (full on both visits) or something else, but 30 minutes for menus and over an hour for even appetizers, and having to beg for water? And 2+ hours to complete dinner - very similar to an early June visit too. At least the food was as good as always.

I had an experience which sounds exactly like yours, waiting ungodly amounts of time for any kind of service at all. To make our situation worse than yours, only half of our food was freshly made or tasting up to par. Soggy mushy Chinese broccoli and soup missing ingredients, both served at room temp. This was a couple months ago, and I didn't want to say anything, assuming it was a fluke. I'll totally give them another chance on a weekday perhaps, but really wish they would either get their shit together with the kitchen/staff, or not seat people until they can handle the load. I'd rather be waiting outside for an extra hour than be sitting down trying to flag down a distressed, overworked server.

laikom wrote:

BR wrote:I continue to love Sun Wah, but I'm probably one more bad weekend visit away from avoiding Friday/Saturday evening visits completely. For the second time in just over a month, I made a weekend evening visit to dinner with friends and received very poor (essentially non-existent) service. I don't know if it's inadequate staffing (full on both visits) or something else, but 30 minutes for menus and over an hour for even appetizers, and having to beg for water? And 2+ hours to complete dinner - very similar to an early June visit too. At least the food was as good as always.

I had an experience which sounds exactly like yours, waiting ungodly amounts of time for any kind of service at all. To make our situation worse than yours, only half of our food was freshly made or tasting up to par. Soggy mushy Chinese broccoli and soup missing ingredients, both served at room temp. This was a couple months ago, and I didn't want to say anything, assuming it was a fluke. I'll totally give them another chance on a weekday perhaps, but really wish they would either get their shit together with the kitchen/staff, or not seat people until they can handle the load. I'd rather be waiting outside for an extra hour than be sitting down trying to flag down a distressed, overworked server.

Ditto on all points. I didn't want to bring it up at the time, but my family had a terrible experience here - one of our favorite restaurants - on the evening following my grandmother's passing. Nonexistant service, rude shit from the servers and floor managers, it sucked.

I still love Sun Wah; everyone has a bad day. But I'm bitter about the experience and probably won't be returning soon. My money is better spent down the street at one of the less-trafficked Vietnamese places.

Hopefully Kelly is scanning this thread and it should serve as an early warning with four separate disappointing experiences in the past few months. If LTH'ers, who love SW, are concerned, she should be as well. Many people might not share their experiences, but just would not return. There are enough restaurants that have been ruined by success.

I should note that as another data point, I organized a banquet at Sun Wah in April on a Saturday for 75 people, and we had no complaints about the food (it was Sun Wah's greatest hits - they ranged from great to good), but the place was crazy-busy (and I wished that they had a private room for our party). I could see how smaller tables might have received less than adequate service. For us, the standards were up to their usual level.

I've had the same issue in the past. My remedy is to take out or make sure the server is one of the veterans going back to the old smokey little spot on Argyle, especially that sassy lady with short hair. The newer staff is spotty at best sometimes.

JeffB wrote:I've had the same issue in the past. My remedy is to take out or make sure the server is one of the veterans going back to the old smokey little spot on Argyle, especially that sassy lady with short hair. The newer staff is spotty at best sometimes.

mr. cheng, the head of the family that owns sun wah, supervised my take out order, which was so disappointing. (see post above).i know kelly is a new mom and that has to affect her priorities, but it sounds like someone needs to pay better attention to both food and service.

As another data point, I've had a couple meals there lately, all with smaller parties, and have not had any service or food issues at all. My visits weren't on a weekend, though.

Another data point: we have had several recent weeknight visits, and all was fine. In fact, Cabbagehead and I had dinner at SW Monday night and enjoyed prompt service and food good as ever. We do tend to avoid weekends just because it gets so busy there.

My visit was on a Wednesday night. And it was one of the worst restaurant experience I've had in Chicago.