Glorious Chinese food | just another reason why Seattle envies the Eastside

As a large, urban city, Seattle may have lots of fine dining options. But when it comes to Asian cuisine, the land of the 206-area-code has got nothing on what 425 has to offer.

Henry’s Taiwan, Bamboo Garden, Noodle Boat, Facing East Taiwanese Restaurant, Spiced and most recently, Din Tai Fung – these East and Southeast Asian restaurants have gained attention, not only by local food lovers, but by the most well-respected Seattle media outlets and critics.

“In terms of authenticity and quality, I think a lot of us are jealous that the good restaurants are on the Eastside,” said Jay Friedman, food editor of SunBreak online magazine who loves Noodle Boat, a Thai restaurant in Issaquah. “It definitely gives us reason to go [across the water].”

Another Seattle critic, chef and blogger of cookingthroughchina.com, Lorna Yee agrees. Yee grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia, said to have the best Chinese food outside of China. So she knows what she’s talking about. Locally, she recommends a specific dish from Monsoon East in Bellevue that’s “delicious, and very, very Chinese”: steamed cod with glass noodles, woodear mushrooms, black beans and ginger ($30).

“The flavors are a little better on the Eastside,” Yee said. “The Chinese restaurants I’ve eaten at in [Seattle’s International District] often have food that’s lukewarm and super greasy.”

So how could this happen? It could be because the Eastside is becoming more of hub for Asian American and immigrant Asian culture than the big city across the water.

A DIVERSE ASIAN COMMUNITY

Seattle may have the International District and plenty of organizations and businesses run by long-established Asian American families and their descendants. But it doesn’t have Microsoft, Boeing and the other mega companies responsible for the Eastside’s increasingly Asian immigrant workforce and community.

With more than 25 percent of the population identifying as Asian, Bellevue had the highest proportion of Asians out of the 55 Washington places reported in the 2006-2008 U.S. Census survey.

Jerry Li, who worked at Microsoft in finance for more than a decade before being laid off last year, is heavily involved in the Bellevue’s Chinese community. He organizes the city’s table tennis club at Crossroads mall, which he says has about 60 members, almost all of whom are of Chinese descent.

Li worked with many people who were born in Asia at Microsoft, especially people originally from India, Korea, Japan and China.

He said the best food he’s had outside his native town in Northern China has been in Vancouver, British Columbia. There are simply more people from China there. The best food and most cultural offerings will be wherever the immigrants are, he said.

Not to say that he can’t find anything good at home on the Eastside. Lee goes to Bamboo Garden in downtown Bellevue for spicy Szechwan food, known for its bold flavors and liberal use of garlic and chili peppers.

COOKING BY HEART

Along with Bamboo Garden and Din Tai Fung, Henry’s Taiwan is well known for it’s Szechwan food. This low-key restaurant is a garage-size gem tucked away in a Korean food market in the Lake Hills Shopping Center.

Chef and owner Henry Ku is well known for his Taiwanese Lunch Box ($4.95), a mix of rice, pork chop and greens, fatty ground pork over rice ($4) and for his outrageous Stinky Tofu, made by aging tofu in a pungent brine, sometimes sauced with red pepper or Sichuan peppercorns ($5.95). Some of specialties are the same as the ones you’d find in the street stalls of Taipei.

Some of his dishes are part traditional, part his own creation (such as his spicy beef noodle), but Ku is a well-trained chef who’s professionally tried his hand at everything from French to Japanese cuisine and combines what he’s learned in his decades of making food into his own style.

However, that doesn’t mean that authenticity isn’t important. Ku still goes back to his native Taiwan to help refine his craft. He said he owes his success to his ability to cook from memory, re-creating the tastes he remembers from his boyhood and “cooking by heart, not by a recipe.”