Kung Pao packs an inexpensive punch

John Volo

My buddy Sean (an infomercial fanatic) and I recently went to Kung

Pao for lunch.

If there were a late night infomercial for Kung Pao, it would

probably go something like this: “How much could you expect to pay

for a plate of orange flavor beef and fried rice? $6 or $7? What if

it also came with an egg roll and a couple of cream cheese wontons?

Seven, maybe eight dollars? But wait, there’s more: as an additional

bonus, we’ll throw in tea, a cup of soup and a small dessert. Other

places might charge $9 or $10, but at Kung Pao, you get all this for

the unbelievably low price of just $5.50!”

While some infomercial products make outlandish claims (think:

golf pro in a bottle), or are way overpriced (think: 3 easy payments

of $29.99), Kung Pao offers up good food at a tremendous price. Every

day, Kung Pao offers 37 lunch specials priced at less than six

dollars.

For our meal, I got the Peking chicken, while Sean got the orange

flavor beef.

The soup that accompanies all lunch specials is the hot and sour

soup. It’s advertised as shredded pork, shrimp, bean curd, truffle

and egg flower in a full broiled broth. There’s also a star next to

it on the menu -- indicating a spicy dish. While this soup was tasty,

it certainly wasn’t spicy, and only slightly sour. We added crisp

chow mein noodles -- there’s a plate of them at every table -- to our

soups. There were several pork sightings, but no sign of any shrimp

in either of our soups.

Not that we needed to, but we ordered a barbecue pork appetizer.

Thin slices of tender pork are slathered in a sweet barbecue sauce

and served over shredded cabbage. Like true carnivores, we quickly

devoured it all.

The Peking chicken was fantastic -- chunks of lightly battered

chicken are deep fried and mixed with garlic in a thin, ginger

flavored sauce. The outside was crispy, in a fragile way, while the

inside remained moist. The orange flavor beef is sliced beef, heavily

battered and deep fried, then coated in an orange sauce. Don’t let

the spicy dish notation scare you; it’s only spicy when you encounter

one of the few seared red chile peppers. Sean liked this dish very

much.

The egg roll and cream cheese wontons are standard fare. Both the

tubular, veggie- filled egg roll and the wontons worked best when

dipped in the sweet sauce provided at every table. Our opinions on

the fried rice differed. I meant to substitute with steamed rice, but

forgot. Fried rice is usually too greasy and too vegetable-laden for

my liking. Kung Pao’s fried rice is very atypical -- its mound of

rice is soft, not at all greasy, with just a few peas and carrots. I

thought it was very similar to steamed rice, and enjoyed it. Sean, on

the other hand, prefers the more traditional version of fried rice.

Our dessert was a half scoop of vanilla ice cream. Just enough to

satisfy my sweet tooth.

In addition to the typical Mandarin and Szechwan offerings, Kung

Pao lunch specials also include: shredded pork with hot garlic sauce,

tomato beef, the comically named “three ingredients” (shrimp,

scallops, crab meat and chicken) and cashew nut chicken. There is

also, naturally, Kung Pao chicken and shrimp.

While I’ve focused solely on Kung Pao’s incredible lunch specials,

there is also have an extensive dinner menu.

But before I finish, I must tell you about the service, which was

strikingly efficient. Within seconds of being seated (literally

seconds), a server placed a pot of tea on the table and filled our

water glasses. Before we even placed our order, we had a cup of soup

in front of us. No sooner did we finish with something; a server

would whisk away the empty plate. Our water glasses never once ran

dry.

There was no need to converse; it was as if we were communicating

telepathically with the server.

Although we were in and out in roughly 30 minutes -- about as long

as an infomercial -- we never felt rushed, just well taken care of.

* JOHN VOLO is the Independent restaurant critic. If you have

comments or suggestions, e-mail [email protected].