Food Stuff

At rush hour, the typical Chinese-restaurant experience is like a Peking sidewalk: crowded, hurried and impersonal. The experience at is something else altogether. The restaurant, which opened last July, is located in a modest space on the ground floor of a white Victorian. We were greeted like visiting neighbors as we were directed to a table where a living-room sofa might have sat at some point in history. A multilingual chatter was heard during the meal, as the real neighbors dropped in from the multiethnic Southside neighborhood. The restaurant is open for all three meals, with the breakfast menu including congee, dumplings, buns and Chinese donuts. We liked the huge portions and low prices and found the egg-drop soup and deep-fried sole to be particularly fine. We’ll be back for more of the neighborly hospitality of Gam Lei Sig. 918 S Street, (916) 446-6888.