Chinese influence spreads at Jimmy Wan's Restaurant and Lounge

Jimmy Wan Sr. opened his first restaurant, Jimmy Wan's Taipei, in O'Hara in 1985, when few people would have expected that a high-end restaurant specializing in Chinese cuisine could thrive in the suburbs. But thrive it did, and many Pittsburghers credit Wan with introducing high-quality Chinese food to the area. Although he's no longer associated with the original restaurant, he and his family returned to O'Hara this year with Jimmy Wan's Restaurant and Lounge. They also run Wan's Cranberry location, which opened more than 20 years ago.

At the new restaurant in O'Hara, most of the menu items are Chinese, but the sushi bar also offers a lengthy list of appetizers, nigiri sushi and sashimi, rolls and complete sushi dinners. A number of appetizers and a few entrees are distinctly fusion. The menu doesn't seem like the unified creation of one individual chef; in fact, it requires the supervision of three chefs -- John Zhang oversees the Chinese entrees, Kenny Eng is the dim sum chef, and Jason Liu oversees sushi preparations.

The ambience is best described as casual fine dining. Food is served on small plates, which are replaced between courses. Diners are encouraged to drink wine or sake with their meal (hot tea isn't automatically offered).

It's possible to have a very good meal here, but it's also possible for a meal to be ruined by a few dismal dishes.

Cold sesame noodles ($5) were a tasty, refreshing start to one dinner. The spaghetti-shaped noodles were perfectly cooked, tossed in just the right amount of a sweet, nutty peanut-sesame sauce and topped with chopped green onions and thinly sliced cucumber, which added a little bite and a little coolness.

But an appetizer of seared scallops in soy marinade looked and tasted fussy and overworked ($12). The small scallops, arranged in rows, were each served on a tiny pile of wakame seaweed salad and topped with some tobiko, bright orange fish eggs. The swipe of aioli on the edge of the plate was much too heavy a sauce for delicate, sweet scallops.

Special seafood dumplings ($6) are a little misnamed -- they're filled with a mix of pork, shrimp and scallop but they taste almost solely of pork.

Traditional Shanghai soup dumplings ($8), dough wrappers folded around aromatic broth and a smaller ball of pork filling, were rich and flavorful.

Chinese entrees are divided into sky, land and sea categories. Ruby chicken ($17) consisted of small pieces of thin, white-meat chicken. The chicken was cooked well and had an almost velvety texture, but the red rice wine sauce was overwhelmingly sweet with a sticky consistency.

Peking duck (half, $20; whole, $38) is supposedly the restaurant's signature dish, but it's no more impressive than versions offered at other Pittsburgh restaurants. While the skin was crisp, the meat was dry. It did come with excellent house-made pancakes, so thin they were practically transparent.

Occasionally the menu seems to be paying lip service to more interesting dishes without following through on them. It was exciting to see so many dishes labeled as Szechuan, a fiery cuisine that is barely represented in the Pittsburgh area. Unfortunately, none of the dishes I tried was discernibly spicy and certainly none had the distinctive mouth-tingling spice of Szechuan peppercorns.

Szechuan beef ($17) was actually quite tasty, mixing small bites of shredded beef with a plentiful garnish of carrots, celery and green onions in a lightly sweet brown sauce. Celery's intense flavor worked well in this dish, creating layers of flavor and texture.

Szechuan crispy prawns ($20) turned out to be shrimp encased in batter and deep fried, then covered in a sweet chile sauce that was all sweetness and no chile. It was impressive that the taste of shrimp was still prominent, even underneath the thick coating of batter--ingredients here were generally of good quality.

Double sauteed sliced pork ($16) was tender yet chewy, and the contrast between this texture and that of small pieces of firm tofu made the dish especially enjoyable. Though tofu turns up in a number of meat-based entrees, vegetarians will mostly have to content themselves with three tofu dishes and five vegetable sides. Some might consider this ample choice, but given that there are a dozen chicken dishes alone, a little more creativity might have been in order.

Kung pao tofu ($13) was a classic and credible version of the dish, with red and green bell peppers, wok-toasted cashews and blackened red chiles.

Vegetables actually showcased some of the best, most subtle cooking on the menu, so it's unfortunate that they aren't given more play. Japanese eggplant ($12) had the lovely shrunken skin and collapsed, soft interior that can only be achieved by cooking with very high heat.

Japanese options are a mix between more traditional Japanese sushi and more Americanized offerings. If you like large, new-style rolls, you'll find a wide variety here, including the Tropical roll ($13) made with salmon, cucumber and avocado, tempura-fried and topped with kiwi; and a Barbershop roll ($13) made from crabstick, cucumber, red and white tuna, spicy aioli, sriracha, scallion, tobiko and tempura flakes.

More traditional sushi offerings are reliable but not overly impressive. The chirashi bowl ($18), a chef's selection of sashimi artfully arranged on a bed of sushi rice, was reasonably priced, but browning slices of avocado and a garnish of artificial crab weren't good additions. The quality of the fish varied. Escolar was delicious, but the tuna had a slightly off flavor, as if had been frozen improperly or was a day past its prime.

To some extent traditional Japanese sushi is differentiated from the overstuffed American rolls and fusion-inspired appetizers, making it slightly easier for diners to navigate the menu depending on what they're interested in. It would be nice if more traditional Chinese options could also be singled out, perhaps by an asterisk.

Servers might also be useful in guiding diners to more interesting dishes, but at this point they're not familiar enough with the menu or the food to answer more than basic questions.

Dessert is rarely the focus at Chinese or Japanese restaurants, but Jimmy Wan's offers a variety of options. The dessert list wasn't particular exciting -- Japanese mochi ice cream ($5) was bland and the glutenous rice layer a little stiff. Banana spring rolls were a great contrast between crisp pastry shells and warm banana filling, but they were served with ice cream and caramel sauce so sweet I could practically feel cavities forming. The dim sum menu, however, offers some great dessert options. Try the sesame balls ($5), gorgeously crispy pastries rolled in sesame seeds and filled with savory-sweet red bean paste with its addictively smooth and chewy texture.

The best dishes at Jimmy Wan's were memorable and pleasurable: The egg custard tart ($5), baked to order, with a velvety smooth custard that elegantly walked the line between sweet and savory. Tender, bright green and white leaves of bok choy ($12) were gently steamed with white wine and garlic. The stems had just the right amount of resistance to the teeth, the leaves were delicate and sweet, and each bite was full of flavor.

But a restaurant is defined by its worst dishes as well as its best ones, and at Jimmy Wan's the two are too equally balanced. I traveled to the O'Hara location, hoping to find Pittsburgh's best-kept secret. Instead I found a restaurant that seems to be uncertain of its role -- should it shake up its menu and continue to educate its customers about Chinese food or should it stick to middle-of-the-road American-ethnic classics?

The current solution seems to be simply serve everything