Cheap Eats - Good morning, Beijing

China Kitchen a lesson in breakfast



The food court in Chinatown Square Mall is often overlooked. It vies for attention against Oriental Pearl, one of the best dim sum restaurants in town, as well as an Asian grocery and bakery. Located alongside the Chinese Community Center, the mall is a hub of activity for many of the 50,000-plus Chinese Americans in Atlanta, and that fact is apparent when searching for parking any weekend afternoon. In the last two years, the mall has undergone major renovation and now features a landscaped inner courtyard with shrubs, a water garden, a bridge and Chinese detailing. After years of food-court turnover, six restaurants seem anchored in place. But China Kitchen has been there from the beginning.

Chinese breakfast: Replace omelets with whole chickens, grits with conji porridge? Though non-Asian Americans often treat dim sum as brunch, dim sum is actually Chinese “tea time” and is more of an afternoon event. China Kitchen serves authentic Chinese breakfast items like funnel cake and sweet rice, along with soy soups and steamed dumplings — more traditional Chinese breakfast fare.

Bowl nazi: The family-run business’ perennial fixture is an elderly man who takes food orders at the counter. He’ll speak to you shyly in English, but it’s a much smoother operation with a Mandarin-fluent friend. Although welcoming, he’s stingy with chopsticks and bowls. When asked to split a large soup into two bowls, he curtly replied, “Not possible.”

Funnel cake?: Maybe something is lost in translation but it was strange to see funnel cake on a breakfast menu. This is not the sugared carnival food but sweet, greasy dough fried and served in long, crispy strips. The cake comes plain ($1), wrapped in rice or soaked in soup. The “sweet sticky rice with funnel cake (salty)” ($1.95) arrived wrapped in plastic and molded into a long cylinder. We unwrapped the plastic and ate the rice with inner funnel cake, like a burrito.

Hey, dumplin’: The pot stickers (six for $1.95) are made with handmade wraps fried to a golden brown that turn crispy and sweet. The pork dumplings are also a must (six for $2.95), with doughy wraps and a compact center of pork. And don’t miss the “flaky onion pancake” ($1.39) — fried crispy scallion pancakes. If you need something to spice it up, find the jar of red pepper flake paste and add a splash of vinegar.

Noodlin’: The pork chop noodle soup ($4.95) is served with a light broth, flour noodles, green onions and strips of chewy, fried bone-in pork chop. We split the big bowl and slurped up the salty soup and strips of toughened meat. The Taipei beef noodle soup ($4.95) is similar, but with a darker broth and hunks of beef flank. Against the advice of my Chinese friends, I ordered sesame paste noodles ($3.80). The hot noodles are coated in a fine sesame paste that tastes like a coating of silt and smells awful. Always remember, when in the Chinese food court, do as the Chinese do.

jerry.portwood@creativeloafing.com??