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Friend's Kitchen - Shandong Cuisine

MY REVIEW: A friend and I went to this restaurant about a year ago and really liked the cold, spicy beef tendon appetizer. The other dishes we tried at that time were not as impressive - the fried pork dumplings and shrimp with tofu. Recently I stopped by to get something to-go. The menu is still posted in the window like most of the restaurants in that strip so I looked it over before going in. The sign in the window still says Friend’s Kitchen but the business card and take-out menu call it My Friend’s Home Restaurant - Classic Home Style Chinese Cooking. The place was packed when I was there before but had only a few tables occupied this time and I was worried about maybe a change in ownership and decline in the food but they say the name actually hasn’t changed?

Anyway, there are some interesting, exotic dishes on the menu including Qingdao Seaweed Jelly, Wuhan Duck Neck and Cabbage with Jellyfish but I stuck with something more familiar, squid with mustard greens. As a lunch special this was only $4.95, a bargain, and was very good, not quite as good as the beef tendon had been but better than the other dishes I’ve had. The squid (the body, not the tentacles) was firm but not tough or chewy; the mustard greens, apparently pickled Chinese mustard greens, were very aromatic with lots of crisp diced stem pieces to contrast with the leaves. They were also very, very salty. I really liked this despite, or perhaps because of, the saltiness but I watch my salt intake and am not used to this much so I was guzzling water for 24 hours.

I will be back but I think I’ll stay away from dishes with Chinese mustard greens as much as I like greens.

The waitresses have all been very nice and there’s been no problem communicating because of a language barrier.

NAME: brucesw
SUBMITTED: 5/11/2011   LAST VISIT WAS: 5/11
FREQUENCY: Visited 2-3 times

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