Lao Beijing

Wonton Soup

We went to lunch in Chinatown at Lao Beijing. This was different than our dim sum experience from a couple of months before. It had a huge menu with some things we had heard of (Americanized versions of Chinese food) and some dishes we had never heard of (or wanted to every try-like salt and pepper squid). We tried to stick to items we had heard of.

Steamed Buns

To start we had Wonton Soup.  It was a little bland for Nick's taste in wonton soup, but it was a good dish to warm us up on such a cold day.

We had ordered some pork steamed buns at the same time as the soup and would have preferred them to come as an appetizer.  Instead they came out after all of our other dishes.  They were tasty, but we definitely prefer the the ones we had at the dim sum restaurant - they were more fresh and lighter.  But these steamed buns did have more more meat filling.

Pineapple Chicken

We ordered three different entree type foods so we could try more things and knowing we would be taking a lot home.  The pineapple chicken was kind of like a sweet and sour dish, but made even more sweet with the pineapple in it. The Honey Crispy Shrimp was the best dish we had.  It was sweet, spicy  and crunchy all at the same time.  Lastly we had noodles with pork.  This dish had an overwhelming amount of garlic that was too much for Natalie but tasty for Nick (so he got those leftovers).

Final thoughts on Lao Beijing:

Honey Crispy Shrimp

Food - It was a good but not great meal.  The honey crispy shrimp was the best, but not enough to draw us back there in the future.
Service - we experienced some very poor service.  There seemed to be some confusion over who was our server.  We placed the soup and steamed buns order with one waiter and the other items with another waiter.  It took at least 30 minutes to get other food after finishing our soup.  We figured they just forgot about the steamed buns.  But we saw tables all around us getting food.  So maybe it was because we weren't "regulars" that we didn't get better service.  Who knows.  We just felt we were sitting there for a long time and the restaurant wasn't even completely full.

Noodles with pork

Atmosphere - the space is small and clean, just not as "Western" friendly as other establishments, but we are in Chinatown after all.