Authentic Chinese cuisine in the 'burbs? Check the map for Mapo
Naperville standby Old Peking served the community Chinese food for more than a quarter century. A little more than a year ago, the name changed, as did the menu, but it all remains in the family - just with a little more zip.
Old Peking's owner, Debbie Wu, sold the restaurant to a cousin, Kevin Wu. Until taking over the Naperville eatery, Kevin Wu was a partner in the erstwhile Lao Sze Chuan/Sze Chuan House in Palatine. He added an emphasis on Szechwan and Hunan cooking and Old Peking's name to Mapo.
"About 80 percent of our customers are Chinese," said Sandy Sirisomsack, Debbie Wu's daughter, who remains a manager.
While this doesn't necessarily signal quality (after all, look at how many Americans go to bad American restaurants), in this case, you can take it as an excellent sign. Mapo ranks with any restaurant in Chicago's Chinatown, offering a level of authenticity and flavor we don't often see in suburban Chinese restaurants.
A signature appetizer, Mapo's beef rolls, makes a first-rate starter. The dish offers paper-thin slices of marinated beef rolled up in delicious scallion pancakes, served toasty from the oven in a foil wrapper and accompanied by soy and chili dipping sauces. Another starter, Sichuan cold noodles, combines chill and heat in a spicy, peanutty sauce dotted with green onions.
It's an unfortunate fact that the most authentic Chinese restaurants tend to make less delicious egg rolls than more-Americanized spots. Mapo's slender, somewhat greasy offerings don't disprove the rule. I did not try other commonplace dishes such as crab rangoon or sweet-and-sour chicken, which share the menu with more-challenging items such as beef tendon and five-flavored squid, but I'd guess that this isn't the place to order them.
The house specialty, of course, is mapo tofu. Mapo means "pockmarked lady," and according to a story on the Mapo menu, it was the nickname of a Szechwanese chef famous for her tofu dish. Mapo offers five versions of mapo tofu - plain or with beef, pork, shrimp or fish - all starting with silky soft tofu cubes mixed with leeks, black beans and green onion swimming in fiery, flavorful red sauce.
Tofu fans will also find dishes such as braised deep-fried tofu, sesame tofu, salt-and-pepper tofu, dry chili tofu and seafood tofu casserole.
Spicy beef noodle soup, another house specialty, is one of a number of entree-sized soups and noodle dishes.
Szechwan cooking is one of the few Asian cuisines that really highlights lamb, and Mapo does an excellent job with bite-sized morsels sauteed with cumin, colorful with crimson dried chilies, white onions, green jalapenos and red bell peppers. A similar dish is made with pork spare ribs. Another dish one doesn't see often is silkened egg topped with ground beef.
An extensive list of vegetable dishes includes a pleasant bamboo mixture, "two seasons bamboos," a saute of pointed bamboo shoots and larger chunks of winter bamboo mixed with pickled vegetable.
Service is friendly, but there can be some language difficulty, so ordering by the number might be wise.
The strip-mall spot, larger inside than it looks outside, presents nice, but fairly plain, dining-room decor highlighted by lovely, large paintings of historic Chinese scenes, including a wall-filling marketplace panorama.
Restaurant reviews are based on one anonymous visit. Our aim is to describe the overall dining experience while guiding the reader toward the menu's strengths. The Daily Herald does not publish reviews of restaurants it cannot recommend.
Mapo
Location: 1563 Naperville Wheaton Road, Naperville
Contact: (630) 420-1388 or maporestaurant.com
Cuisine: Chinese
Setting: Simple strip-mall space north of Ogden Avenue
Price range: appetizers $1.25 to $8.50; entrees $7.50 to $16.95
Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday; 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday
Accepts: Reservations, major credit cards