Restaurant Review: Yin Yang Chinese Restaurant

Mein man

By: Bill Kohlhaase
Published online: Friday, June 22, 2012
Appeared in: Pasateimpo

The notion of comfort food — traditional, home-style dishes reminiscent of our mothers’ meals — shouldn’t be limited to meatloaf, mac ’n’ cheese, and apple pie. I find a lot of solace-inducing qualities at classic Chinese restaurants, where the food is familiar, satisfying, and flavored with hints of nostalgia. For me, it started in utero. Family history says that Mom refused to leave Ming Toy Café in Omaha without finishing her chop suey even as I was making it clear I was ready to enter this world. Later, Mom dined at Ming Toy with me on her hip. I learned to love chow mein, fried rice, and egg drop soup not long after I learned to walk.

Maybe that’s why I feel so comfortable at Yin Yang Chinese Restaurant. Set at the Cerrillos Road end of the Design Center, the place is a decorator’s jumble of Chinese art, ivy-trailed trellis, paper lanterns, and plastic potted plants. Service is prompt, if perfunctory, and the bill is written in Chinese characters. There’s plenty that’s familiar — nearly 100 items are listed on the menu — and while what comes from the kitchen is seldom cutting edge, it’s usually competently prepared and decently presented. The menu claims Hunan and Peking influences, and you’ll certainly find the fish and spiciness of the former as well as crispy duck and other fried dishes that help define the latter. And there’s plenty of stir-fry and even a hot pot or two that recall the Cantonese dishes that dominated Chinese-American cooking in decades past. Now that Asian fusion has become the status quo, it’s nice to get back to the Chinese food our mothers fed us. Can you say moo goo gai pan?

The food that comes from the kitchen sometimes has yin-yang inspiration. A few entrees pair different meats in opposing sauces on either side of the plate, establishing contrasts. But balance is everything, and the cooking at Yin Yang is more about compatibility than opposition. In the Peking style, presentation is central. Both meats in the Szechuan-style beef and shrimp dish are served spicy, the grilled beef in dark kung pao sauce, the shrimp in a red chile sauce, the two meats separated by a radish deftly carved to resemble a carnation. Shrimp Duet, with plenty of red pepper in its sauce, was balanced by unspiced vegetables. The spicier a dish, the better I liked it. Triple Harvest, a blend of shrimp, chicken, and beef with sautéed vegetables in a nondescript gravy, paled next to that radiant Szechuan beef and shrimp. Happy Family didn’t make us happy at all, the different sauces on the scallops, shrimp, and chicken clashing as much as your in-laws. A whole deep-fried sea bass had crusty skin and white flesh falling away when deboned into a just-right sauce of garlic warmth, soy saltiness, and sweet notes. The citrus-sauced preparations such as orange beef and crispy orange scallops weren’t too sweet, something that diners who favor the syrupy variety of orange or pineapple on anything may not appreciate. The least spicy dish, chop suey, brought back fond memories, the slices of white chicken and chopped vegetables in a translucent, broth-flavored sauce, the kind of gentle, savory dish that has a comfort all its own.

Chinese appetizers can be read like a fortune cookie to reveal the quality of what will follow. One can make a meal of them here. The pu-pu tray held a number of delectables fanned around a tiny, flaming charcoal pot for finishing off the cho-cho beef or warming up chicken wings — not that they needed it. The pork ribs, nicely glazed, were a bit tough, but the wings were juicy and spicy, the wontons deftly stuffed, and the shrimp, well, they didn’t need time on the fire pot. Onion pancakes — flatbreads peppered with green onions — were a delight after a dip in the accompanying sweet soy. The egg rolls were fine if not distinguished. The potstickers hid savory ground pork and hints of onion and carrot.

Yin Yang has an extensive, affordable lunch buffet that occasionally offers items not found on the menu, like sesame chicken and crisp green beans in brown sauce. The plates I’ve put together were inconsistent, and it seemed the same sauces, one brown and one red, were served to accompany almost everything. Dishes were best when first brought out. Roughly chopped raw cabbage in a sweet vinegar dressing, a kind of slaw served at certain Southern barbecues, was the highlight. The fried rice was gone and never refilled, and the sweet and sour soup was neither sweet nor sour. Order lunch from the menu. My last time there, I watched diners come back from the buffet with loaded plates as I savored those orange scallops still crisp from their frying, sitting among the mushrooms and pea pods and water chestnuts in a blush-colored sauce as warm as a mother’s love.