30 NJ Chinese restaurants you need to try right now
By Peter Genovese | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com and Jeremy Schneider | NJ Advance Media For NJ.com | Excerpt from original post on May 25, 2021:
Chinese food may have been supplanted by Italian and Mexican as America’s favorite cuisine, but it is no less beloved. There are about 45,000 Chinese restaurants in the U.S., and few are the towns and cities that don’t have at least one.
There are eight great regional Chinese cuisines: Szechuan, Cantonese, Hunan, Fujian, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Shandong. Hunan and Szechuan are “heart-clutchingly spicy,” according to “China The Cookbook,” an excellent reference guide. (Fuschia Dunlap’s various books on Chinese food are also highly recommended).
For this list of Chinese restaurants, we did not consider Asian fusion restaurants, those with some combination of Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Korean, etc.
Instead, we aimed to focus on authentic Chinese, which means a reference or two to sliced pork kidney, Ants Climbing a Tree and other famed Szechuan, Cantonese, Hunan and Shanghainese dishes. Don’t worry, we’re not talking about real ants.
Here are 30 terrific spots you need to try right now, ordered alphabetically by town name. Dig in!
Excerpt for Chengdu 23 starts here:
Photo of Spicy cabbage, Chengdu 23, Wayne (Peter Genovese | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)
Chengdu 23, Wayne
Within walking distance of Willowbrook Mall, Chengdu 23 is my favorite Chinese restaurant in the state, and a recent visit did nothing to change that opinion. Sign of a great restaurant? When a dish you last ordered ten years ago (the spicy cabbage, in photo) tastes exactly as you remembered it. That’s consistency. The Bang Bang Chicken, a savory swirl of meat, chilis and vegetables, looks like a dish conjured over an open fire in a distant village. I also recommend Ants Climbing a Tree, a slithery, slippery mix of cellophane noodles and minced pork. Note: No ants were harmed or even used in the dish. (PG)
For the full article, with mention of Chengdu 23, near the bottom of page, please visit:
https://www.nj.com/entertainment/2021/05/30-nj-chinese-restaurants-you-need-to-try-right-now.html