Century mark

Growing up in the Midwest in the 1960s, Henri had very few opportunities to try ethnic foods, except for lutefisk of course—an opportunity, by the way, of which I most certainly did not take advantage. And while Bjornie’s Hof Brau, a little place on the outskirts of town, claimed to serve Chinese specials on Sunday afternoons, the eatery’s two “Chinese” items were Aunt Tina’s Chow Mein, a sort of a Hamburger Helper with rice and soy sauce, and chop suey, often a concoction of overcooked vegetables, whose origin is, according to Snopes.com, as “mysterious as the dish itself is guileless.”

So, moving to New York and then, years later, to San Francisco, Henri was thrilled by the huge number of authentic Chinese restaurants. And, I must add, he became rather an aficionado.

Colette and I hadn’t been to Tong Fong Low in a couple of years, but decided to head over one recent Sunday evening to help the restaurant celebrate its centennial. First opened in Oroville in 1912, and more familiarly known at the time as “Charlie’s” or Charlie’s Chop Suey (after original owner You “Charlie” Lee), Tong Fong Low’s Chico location was chosen last year by CN&R readers as Chico’s Best Asian Cuisine. And deservedly so.

Colette steered Pierre into downtown Oroville right about 6 p.m., and we were struck by how empty and quiet the streets were—until we turned the corner and saw all the cars parked in front of the restaurant. Inside, it was bustling with customers who seemed to know not only each other but also the help, and others coming and going for take-out. Clearly, there’s a reason it’s been around for a century.

Tong Fong Low serves mostly Cantonese food, the most common Chinese food in the United States, as it tends to be less exotic and spicy than other Chinese cuisines, although a section of the menu is given over to Szechuan dishes. Additionally, some of the Cantonese dishes are marked with a pepper, indicating spiciness. There are two dining rooms, an older one: dark, with large booths and tables and a long bar with a wall-length mirror right out of the Old West. The adjacent room is light and airy with another dozen or so tables.

We started with pork egg rolls (three for $2.75), which were huge, the cabbage and carrots crisp, the wrappers with just a hint of additional batter—delicious, especially dipped in the sinus-clearing hot mustard in the squeeze jar on the table. We also ordered the cashew chicken ($8.25), broccoli and shrimp ($10.95), garlic asparagus ($7.95), and seafood chow mein. We couldn’t decide between the steamed rice ($1.75) and the fried rice ($5.50), so our waiter offered to bring half an order of each.

It was all very good, the vegetables—especially the asparagus—perfectly crunchy, the meat full of flavor. The highlights were the cashew chicken, with lots of whole cashews, green onions, large pieces of tender chicken breast, cabbage, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, snow peas and garlic; and the chow mein, which included shrimp, scallops, white fish, calamari, green onions, garlic and red bell pepper.

The following weekend we headed over to the new Tong Fong Low in Chico to try the lunch specials (which run $4.95-$6.95, with steamed rice or fried rice—50 cents extra for pan-fried noodles) at the second location which opened in 2009.

High-ceilinged, well-lighted and ultra-modern (Colette said she thought she was in a Jetsons cartoon from Beijing), the Chico restaurant has mostly the same menu. (Both locations, by the way, serve chop suey, which we did not try.) We split the Mongolian beef with the noodles, and it was more than enough. It’s definitely one of the best lunch deals in town, and a delicious continuation of a 100-year-old Butte County tradition.