The Past Is Present at King Dragon

It had to happen. Now that retro-food is all the rage and replicas of ‘50s diners can be spotted on every corner, somebody had to start thinking back to the good old days when you could walk into a Chinese restaurant without worrying about finding chicken feet sticking out of your soup. Back to those days when chopsticks seemed exotic and tables in every Chinese restaurant sported bowls of crispy noodlets waiting to be dipped into little dishes of hot mustard and sweet plum sauce. Somebody had to think fondly about the days of egg rolls and egg drop soup and egg foo young. Somebody had to think, why not?

And somebody did. When you walk into King Dragon, 170 N. La Cienega Blvd., Beverly Hills, (213) 652-4187, you know at once that you’ve embarked on a trip back in time. It’s the kind of place where you have to ask for chopsticks, and when they finally bring them, they turn out to be Japanese.

The room is dark and mysterious, the booths are tucked and rolled in bright raspberry fabric, and there’s an enormous pink neon dragon up on the ceiling. Sitting right there on the table are those crispy noodles, only this time they are bigger, fatter and fresher than the ones you remember. In fact everything--from shrimp with lobster sauce to moo goo gai pan and barbecued spareribs--is fresher and bigger than it was in the past. Even the egg rolls are a foot long. The service is better than you remember, too. But the prices bring you right back to the present; count on spending at least $15 per person for this exercise in retro-Chinese.