The first time I tasted the squid sautéed with bok choy at Spice China in Louisville, I realized that it’s been more than 14 years since I was in Shanghai.
In Shanghai time, this was an eternity ago, before things like cellphones and KFC and skyscrapers and Gucci outlets bejeweled its streetscapes.
The current version of Shanghai was under development. There was an undercurrent of hope in the air, but its worldwide commercial importance was, back then, more idea than reality. Nascently capitalist, it was a city on the verge of making it … or failing.
Makes sense that there wasn’t much visible restaurant culture there in 1992. It wasn’t easy to escape the hotel restaurants, most of which were aimed at homesick expats from places like Liverpool or Detroit. But we managed, supping at seafood counters and in fluorescent-lit banquet halls down the street from shopping pavilions with names like People’s Department Store No. 1.
Lobsters and squid, poached in winey broths. Brown-stock soups, bustling with shrimp and eel. Whitefish, tossed in brown sauce. Frogs’ legs, chopped and steamed for you only after you’d picked your own hopper out of the aquarium.
I was intrigued by this stuff, but I didn’t take to Shanghainese cuisine right away. I didn’t understand it. I remember a viscosity that challenged me, a blandness that perplexed me, and spicelessness that frustrated me.
This wasn’t like most Chinese food I’d known up until then, most of which was sharp, zingy and from the Cantonese or Szechuan schools, by way of Chinatown, USA. I’d never seen Shanghainese food before 1992, and I wasn’t sure I liked it.
But I never forgot what it tasted like.
Flash forward to 2006. From all accounts, the air in Shanghai is decidedly different now, full of optimism and glamour and energy. Restaurants flourish. And Shanghainese cuisine has spread worldwide, growing and adapting to new times and new places.
Like Louisville, Colo., where, on McCaslin Boulevard just north of U.S. 36, you’ll find one of the Front Range’s most popular Shanghainese meccas, Spice China.
The cavernous dining room at Spice China, split in two by a glitzy bar and lined on one side by a long, shiny open kitchen, holds dozens of four-top tables and roomy wraparound booths. The staff, dressed in black and well-choreographed, twirl through the room, pencils behind ears and menus in hand.
They’re a fit crew, because it takes muscles to work a shift at Spice China. Just lifting a stack of menus is a workout. Hardcover and clocking in at 21 plastic-sheathed pages, it’s one of the weightiest food rosters in town.
Happily, the daunting tome is divided into two sections, as explained by our servers over three visits.
Up front are dishes we all recognize, mostly with Cantonese and Hong Kong roots: hot and sour soup, sesame chicken, beef with broccoli. Also a few retro- shouts like egg foo yong and chicken chow fun.
The second half of the menu is more interesting, and more in line with what I remember seeing in Shanghai: salt and pepper shrimp, steamed sole in Chinese vinegar, chilled pork tripe, sautéed squid with cashews, eel with white pepper.
My favorite was the squid sautéed with bok choy. From the first bite it commanded my full attention. Not because it had an in-my-face flavor but because it didn’t – up front, there wasn’t much flavor coming through at all. But my tongue was too busy decoding the viscous texture of the broth to care, my teeth occupied testing the tender resistance of the squid. Before I knew it, my serving was half-gone.
Only then did the phantom flavors begin to peek around the rounded corners of the stew: a sugary (but somehow not cloying) savoriness with a pervasive oceany flavor of unadorned squid, clipped by the vaguely astringent bok choy. A quiet note of garlic lingered in the back.
A knockout? No, but this dish wasn’t meant to stop traffic. This dish was a crafty winner that took patience and persistence to fall for. But now I think about it all the time.
Gin du chops, or cubes of pork chop sautéed in a sweet- citrus brown sauce, disappeared quickly from the communal platter. Shrimp sautéed in shaohsing wine, dotted with diced carrots and peas, also disappeared quickly.
Less interesting dishes from the back of the menu were the sallow and chewy salt-preserved duck and the unusual but ultimately dull jellyfish with chicken. (Cooked jellyfish has a rubbery-but-tender, soft-
but-crunchy texture that’s unlike anything else and fun to chew on, but otherwise this dish fell flat).
As for the front of the menu, shrimp with orange peel scored: large, tender shrimps in a light sauce flecked with pungent-sweet preserved orange peel.
General Tsao’s chicken bits were crispy and subtly sauced, allowing the flavor of chicken to stand. It lacked the punch I expect in a GT dish, but I jacked it up with some extra chiles and all was well.
(Come to think of it, don’t expect to find a lot of spice in the back pages of Spice China’s menu. Shanghainese cuisine, in general, doesn’t have the heat of Cantonese food. But if you need a bigger kick to your dish, just ask. Your dish will be less authentic for it, but you’ll be happier with your meal.)
Soups, particularly egg drop and wonton, delivered. The puffy scallion pancake, hot and crispy, satisfied. Shrimp cakes were acceptable, if slightly greasy.
One clear crowd-pleaser that our waiter insisted we try were the crab-and-cheese-stuffed fried wontons, guilty-gooey pods that made no sense to me and that I wouldn’t order again, but which I ate two of without blinking.
Perhaps my favorite dish at Spice China was a very simple watercress sauté with a light garlic sauce, called “Magic Saute” on the menu. This warm, verdant jumble was crunchy- soft on my teeth and tongue, the flavor wet and grassy and pepper-sharp.
Overall, the service at Spice China is unobtrusive, efficient and helpful. My only beef is this: On all three visits, they tried to steer me away from the back of the menu. I’m the kind of diner who wants just the opposite – I want to be encouraged to try something new or unusual. At Spice China, I had to repeatedly convince them that yes, I could handle the jellyfish.
But I’m used to being stubborn when it comes to menu choices, so I stood my ground and ordered what I wanted, like we all should.
Much has changed, in Colorado and in China, since I was last in Shanghai. That city has succeeded, emphatically. And the effects are felt as far away as Louisville.
The mere fact that the big and busy Spice China is successfully serving its unique take on Shanghainese cuisine here (an all-but-unimaginable scenario on this scale even 14 years ago) is a sign of our rapid-paced times.
A good sign, I think.
Dining critic Tucker Shaw can be reached at 303-820-1958 or at dining@denverpost.com.
Spice China
Chinese
269 McCaslin Blvd., Louisville, 720-890-0999
**| Very Good
Atmosphere: Spacious but busy dining room. Hopping happy hours.
Service: Enthusiastic and efficient. Ask for help with the menu, and insist on ordering unusual dishes if that’s what you want.
Wine: A short, sweet, unimportant wine list with a dozen-plus whites and a dozen-plus reds by the bottle or glass. Skip it and have a Mai Tai instead.
Plates: $2-$19.95, with most plates clocking in at around $8 or $9.
Hours: 11:30 a.m. – 9:30 p.m. Sunday-Thursday. 11:30 a.m. – 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
Details: All major credit cards accepted. Big parking lot. No reservations necessary. Great for kids and large parties. Takeout.
Three visits
Our star system:
****: Exceptional
***: Great
**: Very good
*: Good
No stars: Needs work.
