My family had never been to LSC before, despite the rave reviews on this board. When it came time to order, we left it up to everyone else to pick dishes for the table. Dinner was superb. I believe our table had pickled jellyfish to start, along with spicy dry tofu and peanuts. We also had the lamb with cumin, plus two kinds of fish (I know one had black bean sauce), two kinds of duck (the tea smoked version was my personal favorite), a tofu dish, a chicken dish, the pork elbow and a vegetable dish. I'm probably skipping something here. The server neglected to bring the salt and pepper three treasures, so we'll save that treat for our next visit.

The conversation was great and my oldest daughter, a notorious picky eater, tried a small taste of the pork elbow. Both girls really enjoyed the fish with black bean sauce, although I believe the highlight of their evening was the donut and ice cream sundae.

We look forward to this becoming an annual LTH tradition!! Thanks again to eatchicago an petit pois for setting up the dinner. Maybe next year we'll expand and take over the entire top floor.

Suzy

JoelF wrote:Add another vote to the "awesome experience" column.

One more vote! Thanks again to EC and pp for the idea and the organization.

As I was relishing the memories of the dinner, I had two thoughts (one naughty, one nice). Nice, it struck me how limited LSC is in its cuisine. I mean about 3/5 of our dishes looked about the same. Yet, within this tight framework, the dishes all tasted so different (and great). Yes, there were some legitimate, minor quibbles. Like the tea-smoked duck being a bit dry, but I walked away without a single dish I did not like. Now, naughtly, LSC makes want to shove down (and perhaps this is a strawman at this point, given all the people who showed up the other night), but shove down at those who claim there is no good Chinese food in Chicago.

Specific dishes--well, like I say, there was nothing below average. Still, a few things stood out. I just loved the pork elbow. It had the same gross red sauce as so many other dishes, but this one had a brightness to it, I just could not place. EatChicago thought it vinegar, but it really did not taste like that to me. I also liked the house special potherb, something green and contrasting, that stayed mostly in front of me all night. Finally, we ordered a couple of tofu dishes, one from the appetizer section and one from the snacks section mainly to see what they were, and that proved a great strategy. Both came in the heavy, spicy house oil. One was firm almost like cheese, the other so loose it could not be eaten with chopsticks.

I had not been to Lao Sze Chuan in a while. Honestly, it was hard to remmember it was this good. Maybe it was the How Do You Spell Hannukah spirirt. It was that good.

Rob

PS
Yea to everything EC sez about Huck Finn. Someone opens a nice cafe near Chinatown and they can make a fortune offfa us chowhounds.

ditto to everyone above. tho i must say...
major faux pas on my part for the beyond non-kosher hotpot:


the rest of our table's menu (most of which were doused in red chili oil and looked bloody red):
- apps -
minced garlic sliced pork
fried silver string rolls
2 'big bowls' of H&S soup
- entrees -
eggplant in garlic sauce (standard fare)
strings beans with pickled vegetables
and Chengdu dumplings:


re these dumplings: i do not enjoy extremely thick skinned dumplings. thick skinned dumplings do not make a good chengdu dumpling no matter how much i stress "extra szechuan peppercorn/chili oil" to our accomodating waitress. chengdu dumpling should be a bit sweet, and completely ma-la, ie, every dumpling ought to tingle your lips and numb your tongue.

my fave Chengdu dumplings (as well as almost all Szechuan standbys) are found at:
Szechuan Gourmet
135-15 37th Ave.
Flushing, NY

again, thnx for the company, it was a fabulous way to kill yet another forced ingestion of Chinese food...

sdritz wrote:The server neglected to bring the salt and pepper three treasures...

Suzy,
I think we got your s&p treasures. TonyC ordered for us and there was a communication failure and they brought out a steamed 3 treasures (which was sent back. Although it was sure to be good, it's not crispy goodness). At the very end, we reminded them about the s&p and it appeared in about 30 seconds.

On TonyC's list he forgot to mention the crispy shrimp in mayonnaise sauce. This didn't look or taste mayo-ey at all, but had a crisp sweet and sour shell which was just about perfect, not cloying at all.