[Food Review] Taiwanese Specialties 老华西街台菜馆

Three Cup Chicken

Nearly each week, I have time to meet up with Lils and we hit up a restaurant. This week we were in the Elmhurst area and a Taiwanese cuisine restaurant caught our eye. Hungry and eager to try something new, we walked in.
 

It was probably around 3pm when we walked in so it was fairly empty. My friend and I were seated in the window area. They played a lot of old Jay Chou songs to which I recognized immediately. Tea and water was refilled frequently. Thumbs up for the service. If you speak Mandarin, even better, they'll strike up a conversation with you. I'm not that confident in my Mandarin, but I know my order went through. 

Together we ordered the Three Cup Chicken ($11.95), a Taiwanese classic, Beef Stew Noodle ($7.25), and Taiwanese Style Stir Fried Rice Cakes ($7.50). Before the food came, our appetizer was a simple spicy radish pickle. Food came pretty quickly. No need to wait that long which was good since we were both starving after a long day's worth of walking. Wow, the food was purely delicious. If I had another stomach, there were so many other things I would be willing to order.

The Three Cup Chicken is something I will always order at a Taiwanese place. The three cups refers to the three cup ratio of sesame oil, soy sauce, and rice wine. This one was also cooked with ginger and basil. I have to say basil adds a really nice flavor to it. This chicken, as my friend deduced, used thigh meat. It's a nice salty, sticky, sweet sauce that would be perfect with a bowl of rice. Definitely would order it next time.

Beef Stew Noodle was Lil's order and the rice cakes were mine. The beef stew was consisted of braised brisket and tendon, soup, and thick cut noodles. Normally I would expect it to be a very thick broth, but to my surprise they tempered it to be much lighter so that it would be easy to drink. Despite its dark color, it's not very salty and it had a kick of pepper in it. The tendons could have been braised a bit longer, but the meat itself was soaked with flavor.

The rice cake dish I had was rice cakes with cabbage and salted pork. The pork alone is very salty which would make sense to eat it with sweet cabbage and rice cakes. I noticed that it wasn't very greasy as rice cakes required a lot of oil to stir fry to prevent it from sticking into a lump. These were steamed and then stir fried. Again, it was very filling and I would order this again.

5 out of 5 stars and would most likely return in the future.