Min Wah for dinner

[bradshoe]

How late do they serve and are they closed any day?

[ComputerGuy]

Look, you guys need to hire a bus to bring you over here to the Distrito Federal. I have managed to find three really good Chinese restaurants here: one is Taiwanese, one is Beijing, and one is Hong Kong. You come on over and we'll have a stupendous Chinese meal, including excellent steamed dumplings, the best dry-fried green beans I've ever eaten, salt-and-pepper shrimp (the real deal), and as many other honest-to-god wonderful dishes as you can fit in your poor lonesome stomachs. Come for the weekend and we'll have a meal in each of the three restaurants. Plus I will take you shopping for fresh baby bok choy, Chinese broccoli, and most of the Chinese vegetables and staples that you never see in either Guadalajara or at Lake Chapala.

I haven't been to the D.F. yet, so this is a tempting idea. Maybe a busload of Chinese food/pyramid fans? Then we'll see how well MinWah stacks up.

[More Liana]

Computer Guy, I was at one time a professional Chinese chef in a restaurant. I have been to Min Wah. C'mon over. .

[Mainecoons]

I doubt that anyone here would expect that the Chinese food available in our little burg is going to compare with that available in a city of 16 million. At least we don't have to go to Mexico city to get it.

[ComputerGuy]

Yeah, but what fun!

[FHBOY]

We used to travel 25 miles to get decent Chinese food especially on Christmas Eve, but that was in Baltimore and the roads were, shall we say, a bit better. In New York, never more than ten minutes away in almost every neighborhood we lived in. But it just shows to go ya how far we'd go. Min Wah - well, it is a lot cheaper than a plane ticket form GDL to BWI, sigh!!!

[More Liana]

I doubt that anyone here would expect that the Chinese food available in our little burg is going to compare with that available in a city of 16 million. At least we don't have to go to Mexico city to get it.

Well, Sr. Mainecoons, 99.999999999% of the Chinese food available in Mexico City (population more like 25,000,000) is just like the Chinese food at Min Wah: semi-edible. After asiduous searching over the last 2+ years, we have managed to scope out exactly 3 Chinese restaurants where a person can get a marvelous meal at a reasonable price.

[artsnob]

More Liana ...I will be at my Casa in Mex City on June 20 to July 1st, Maybe we could get together for Chinese, if interested PM me and I will send my Mex City call number...Ken

[More Liana]

Ken, hold that thought...we will be in New York while you are here in the DF. Let's do it next time you're in town.

[artsnob]

I will send you all my dates I will be there for the rest of the year...K

[Mainecoons]

Well, Sr. Mainecoons, 99.999999999% of the Chinese food available in Mexico City (population more like 25,000,000) is just like the Chinese food at Min Wah: semi-edible. After asiduous searching over the last 2+ years, we have managed to scope out exactly 3 Chinese restaurants where a person can get a marvelous meal at a reasonable price.

That might be your assessment of all the other Chinese restaurants there and it may or may not be shared by other residents of Mexico City but that doesn't change the fact that this has nothing to do with Min Wah here or our review of it.

We simply don't have the customer base to support a lot of non-Mexican ethnic restaurants and we're grateful that we have this one place that does do a reasonably decent job of preparing and serving Chinese food here Lakeside. Whenever we go to the west coast, we pig out on Chinese that is far better than Min Wah but we don't have unrealistic expectations that a small local eatery in a small town in going to "run with the big boys" in major metropolitan areas.

In fact, as RV has noted on occasion, we have far more restaurant choices here for the size of the population than is usual, and we can supplement that by going to GDL. We have this without having to live in a huge metropolitan area which I'll hazard to guess that most people here are not keen to do.

[gringal]

I really, really like certain ethnic foods........but I'm not about to board a bus or a plane to get them.

One thing I've discovered is that the web is a gold mine of recipes for just about anything you can think of, and our local Superlake had the condiments you need (mostly) to put the dishes together if you're having a yen that can't be denied.

I say that "if you're not with the one you love, love the one you're with".........in this case, we have Min Wah in Ajijic and a place in Joco I've not tried.

[holdrja]

OK, this thread inspired us to try Min Wah for dinner last night. BTW - it is open till 9 pm; at 6:30 on a Friday, we were the only in-house patrons but a couple people got takeout while we were there.

It was really good! Ordered veggie egg rolls - warning, you get 2 eggrolls per 30 peso order, they are really stuffed with veggies, chewy and very filling. Also have small tidbits of meat in them so would not work for vegetarians. Dipping sauces - duck sauce and Chinese mustard - were very good.

Entrees were the house lo mein, and Szechuan tofu with pork. Really well seasoned and cooked. I am shocked to say, better than a number of the local Chinese restaurants on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Which as we all know has better Chinese food than NY's Chinatown....

Total bill with 4 beers and a good tip was 340 pesos. Will definitely return. MaineCoons, thanks for starting this thread.

[Solfeggio]

I agree with OP. Although Min Wah is definitely not the greatest we've ever had, it has satisfied our hankering occasional for Chinese food and kept us sane. We have gone there about once every two weeks for 20 years, and found the food consistently "good," the portions large, and the service friendly and competent. Unlike the OP though, we love taking home leftovers, and usually have at least one more meal at home, which makes the prices pretty reasonable. We frequently order the Plato B, which and especially like their Kung Pao Chicken and their hot & sour soup. In the winter, their sizzling rice soup is a great choice. Considering where we are, I'm grateful to have Min Wah so close to home.

[EX-PAT2011]

OK, just to stay on topic, we have gone to Min Wah twice, but obviously we need to go back a third time. We went to P F Chang and it was the worst!!! OMG how awful!!!! And we did not leave a "generous" tip because the service was as awful as the food. We were really big on the Joco restaurant and still are, but I had a bad experience there last year. We will go again and just order the Tempura shrimp which is really good. Hey, I know we are talking Chinese here, but what about Simply Thai??

[Ginger]

I guess I've had nothing but great experiences at PF Chang's. A group of friends who are some of the best cooks I've seen lakeside & I go regularly & always have great food. Totally authentic? No, but it sure hits the spot. Haven't been to Min Wah except at breakfast but it's nice to hear good reports about it.

[Canamex]

The trouble with PF Chang's is that all their basic condiments are wrong: Japanese soy with white Mexican vinegar and a bit of mustard of I don't know which provenance. The Chinese use black and red vinegars with a very different flavour than the cheap white vinegar in jugs here and Japanese soy has no place in Chinese cooking, it's too different. No sesame oil either. If they can't get the basic seasoning right what's to like? As to Min Wah, I've already made my views on it known.

[Ginger]

I don't care. To each his own.

[ComputerGuy]

I guess what they call tamari is Japanese soy. I buy several types of soy: dark, mushroom, dark mushroom, light... in large bottles, since my first forays into Chinese cooking when I had access to a Chinatown and the grocery stores there. Also Kikkoman for daily use, which is what most people use, and I guess is a shoyu style, saltier, sweeter? Don't really know.

There sure is a difference with the Chinese soys when cooking. These thicker soys do not go well for sprinkling onto white rice as a condiment. I do see a lot of very thin soys on the market around here who's first ingredient is water, with burnt caramel flavouring. Not so nice. And in particular the watery stuff they serve at most restaurants is flavorless.

My cooking vinegars for Chinese are always rice vinegar and rice-wine vinegar (saki vinegar). But I must say the Japanese sushi vinegar for rice cooking is fantastic in any Asian dish.

[RVGRINGO]

I remember Kikkoman when it was imported from Japan and available in gallon cans. It was wonderful! Then, they started making it in Arizona; a watered down, thinner, less tasty product. Once the real stuff was gone, we just quit buying it. The original was so good you just wanted to drink it.

[dave0415]

I remember Kikkoman when it was imported from Japan and available in gallon cans. It was wonderful! Then, they started making it in Arizona; a watered down, thinner, less tasty product. Once the real stuff was gone, we just quit buying it. The original was so good you just wanted to drink it.

I don't think Kikkoman Soy Sauce has ever been made in Arizona. Their production facilities are in Wisconsin and California.

They do not even have a marketing facility in Arizona.

Their Walworth, Wisconsin plant was a client of mine back in the early 70's and the aroma in their plant was amazing. I use nothing else.

[RVGRINGO]

I really did not know where in the USA they had a plant, but wrote Arizona as a most unlikely place.

[jkgourmet]

I really did not know where in the USA they had a plant, but wrote Arizona as a most unlikely place.

In fact, the East Valley area of Phoenix has the fastest growing Asian population in the country.

And tamari is similar but not the same as soy sauce. Tamari uses considerably less wheat in the fermentation process, resulting in a thicker, richer tasting end product.

[ComputerGuy]

Typically, though, a product is tempered to reflect the tastes (or the supposed tastes) of the locales in which it is sold. Coke, as we all know, changes its formula and its sugar-type depending on the location. Perhaps, if it is actually different, Kikkoman did the same in the U.S.

Arby's came to Ottawa, Canada one year. Pizza Hut the same. Arby's decided the special deals and amounts of meat in their sandwiches should be far less pleasing because of some $%&/()ic assumptions about Canadians. Their chain lasted a very few years... and vanished. Pizza Hut, on the other hand, completed changed their pizza recipes to adjust to Canadian tastes, and is a monster hit.

[El Saltos]

Poutine pizza?