Guide to the best Chinese food

Some traditional holiday dishes are unusual enough that only those in the know get them

Behind the Americanized menu in Chinese restaurants is an invisible world of mysterious and amazing food.

YEAR OF THE OXWhat: Celebration of Chinese culture with song, dance, martial arts and dragons. Includes dinner.
When: 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Feb. 28
Where: Veterans Memorial Building, 1351 Maple Ave., Santa Rosa
Cost: $25 adults, $10 children 3-11
Note: Tickets sold in advance only at Asia Mart, 2481 Guerneville Road, Santa Rosa, or G&G Supermarket, 1211 W. College Ave., Santa Rosa
Information: 576-0533, 528-0912, recacenter.org

BEST BETS ON CHINESE FOOD

China Room: 500 Mission Blvd., Santa Rosa. 539-5570
Fresh China: 284 Coddingtown Mall, Santa Rosa. 527-6444.
Gary Chu’s: 611 5th Ave., Santa Rosa. 526-5840.
Hang Ah Dim Sum: 2130 Armory Dr., Santa Rosa. 576-7873.
Kirin: 2700 Yulupa Ave., Suite No. 3, Santa Rosa. 525-1957.
King Hwa: 636 Gravenstein Highway N., Sebastopol. 823-1113.
Lily Kai: 3100 Lakeville Highway #H, Petaluma. 782-1132

It’s the unprinted menu for Chinese palates that offers exotic dishes — shark-fin soup or steamed whole fish complete with head and tail — considered too strange for western eyes or appetites.

In back rooms and banquet halls and private dining rooms during the two-week Chinese New Year celebration, which began with the new moon on Monday, some of the best Chinese you’ll never eat is being served.

It’s not that restaurants are hoarding; many simply doubt the general public spoiled on chow mein will respond to the finer delicacies of authentic Chinese cuisine. That — and the fact that so many Chinese cook for themselves during this joyous time of feast and ancestral honoring — is why you may have a hard time finding traditional Chinese New Year fare north of Chinatown unless you make it yourself.

That doesn’t mean it can’t be done. It’s a question of knowing where to go, or knowing that some restaurants will prepare special dishes if you ask, says Mei Ibach, who was raised in the Chinese culture in Malaysia and Singapore and who teaches Asian cooking at Santa Rosa Junior College.

Hang Ah Dim Sum in Santa Rosa is a favored spot among more discriminating Chinese diners. While it features no Chinese New Year delicacies on the menu, give them a call a day or two in advance and they’ll be happy to do special dishes that authentically usher in this year’s Year of the Ox.

Manager Jack Ha said the restaurant doesn’t have the demand to keep the necessary fresh ingredients on hand. A heads-up will allow them to shop Chinatown for the live lobster, crab, clams and whole roast chicken that take center stage in New Year’s feasts.

You have to be an adventurous eater for some dishes. The holiday is a time for eating the whole creature, a symbol of abundance and prosperity.

Ha said Hang Ah will, for larger groups, do a whole pig, or a Chinese barbecue combo of crispy skinned roast pig, barbecued pork (no skin or bone) and jellyfish. And, by special request, they will do the delicate shark-fin soup that is a deluxe treat of the season.

Lily Kai in Petaluma, another favorite for enthusiasts of authentic Chinese cuisine, also will do special orders with advance notice, including the luscious Buddha Vegetables, with shiitake mushrooms, cellophane noodles and beans, or roast pork with tofu and shiitakes.

Chef-owner Peter Hsian of Fresh China in Santa Rosa’s Coddingtown offers one of the few special menus just for Chinese New Year.

Shan, whose focus is fresh and organic, for $24 a person will serve up a multi-course feast of pork dumplings, rainbow salad with the giant pomelo grapefuit, braised whole rock cod in ginger and soy sauce and jasmine rice, among other treats.

Shan, who for many years ran a vegetarian Chinese restaurant in San Francisco, also has a special meat-free Chinese New Year menu that includes Buddha Delight veggies, seaweed fried rice sprinkled with toasted pine nuts, and shiitake mushroms with smoked tofu in tofu wraps.

When dining during this time of celebration, you can always look for regular dishes on Chinese restaurant menus that evoke the holiday.

At Hang Ah, try the Sesame Bowl, a popular Chinese New Year snack symbolic of good fortune.

Ibach suggests anything with prawns. “This is essential for Chinese New Year because they represent happiness. They can be stir-fried to steamed to deep fried.”

Egg rolls or “spring rolls,” as they are sometimes called, are common on menus and yet are a Chinese New Year tradition because they represent gold nuggets — a sign of prosperity for the new year. Clams, evoking ancient gold coins, also are a sign of good fortune.

In fact, food is central to the celebration because it is so essential to health and prosperity. The Chinese during this time give offerings of sweets and rice wine to the Kitchen God. “The Chinese culture believes the soul of the family always rests in the kitchen,” said Ibach, “because food is larger than life itself.”