Mandarin: The Next Generation : New menu spices up Beverly Hills’ premier Chinese restaurant

The Mandarin, 430 N. Camden Drive, Beverly Hills. (213) 272-0267. Open Monday-Saturday 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m.; Sunday 5 p.m.-11 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $30-$60.

In 1943 Cecilia Chiang walked out of occupied China with gold bars sewn into her underwear. She and her sister disguised themselves as peasants, left their family behind and traveled 2,000 miles to safety in Chung King, much of it on foot. Some of her family she would never see again.

Recently, Chiang made a less perilous journey: She walked out of her successful Mandarin Restaurant in Beverly Hills. But this time she can easily come back to visit--she sold the restaurant to her son, Phillip.

The change had been in the works for some time, but a fire last summer damaged much of the restaurant and became a pivotal event of sorts that signaled the coming of a new era. Out of the embers emerged a youthful, lively Mandarin with a spanking new look and a new modern menu.

Ms. Chiang began a new era of her own when she opened the first Mandarin Restaurant in San Francisco in 1962, though at the time, people said she was crazy. The location, a small spot on Polk Street, was terrible. And the Northern-style food she served--culled from Chiang’s hometown of Beijing, from Shanghai where she lived as an adult, and from the spicy repertoire of Sichuan province-- was completely unfamiliar to San Franciscans who were used to dreary pseudo-Cantonese dishes like egg foo young and chop suey. Even the butchers in Chinatown were baffled when Chiang walked in and asked for lamb. She wanted to serve Mongolian lamb; they had never heard of the dish.

But Chiang’s food was more than unusual--it was delicious. People soon lined up to eat minced squab and kung pao shrimp and Peking duck. Chiang had set a new style for Chinese food in California, and when she moved her restaurant to Ghirardelli Square eight years later, it turned into one of the largest and most elegant Chinese restaurants in the state.

When Chiang opened a Beverly Hills branch of The Mandarin, however, she found herself in an unfamiliar and difficult market. It was 1975 when Chinese food was still considered exotic in Los Angeles and customers weren’t inclined to be adventurous. “Decor and service,” says Chiang, “seemed more important to the guests than food.” And so the Mandarin became the kind of restaurant that folks in Beverly Hills could count on for civilized meals--quiet enough for intimate conversations, elegant enough for special occasions.

Today, of course, nobody eats more adventurously than the people of Los Angeles--and now the Mandarin in Beverly Hills is offering us something to sink our teeth into. For Philip Chiang’s new Mandarin menu is, in its own way, as revolutionary as the one his mother pioneered more than 25 years ago.

You see at once that this is not the same quiet and elegant Mandarin as before. The colors are brighter, and a new open kitchen dominates the main dining room. Here you can watch as Peking duck--the best I’ve had in the city--is pulled from the oven, its skin brown and crisp and delectable. (A new duck is roasted every 15 minutes; if you want one, reserve it the minute you sit down.) Here too the numerous breads, dumplings and pastries listed on the menu are steamed and served.

This is an enormous menu--and one quite unlike that in any Chinese restaurant. To begin, there are dozens of “small tastes and starters.” My favorite is shredded pork sauteed with hoisin sauce and served wrapped up in crepes along with thinly sliced eggs, cilantro, bean sprouts, cucumbers and scallions. The flavors in the dish play off each other; one minute you are tasting something sweet, the next a clear, clean flavor fills your mouth. In contrast, the cold tofu topped with 1,000-year-old eggs, scallions and vegetable preserves offers a palate of bracing flavors. Much like olives, the dish whets your appetite for what will follow.

If the thought of glazed walnuts on a bed of fried spinach leaves isn’t your idea of the way to begin dinner, you might want to stick with egg rolls. The ones here come filled with either chicken or vegetables; they’re crisp and irresistible, even to those of us ashamed to be caught eating them. Fried shrimp wrapped in a sesame-studded batter fall into much the same category--seductive finger food.

You’ll want to eat your way through these little starters. But don’t get carried away. There are 25 to choose from--and that doesn’t include the nine styles of dumplings, a range of rice dishes, great soups and a whole list of noodles. It’s a bit like going to a dim sum house and not having to worry that the best dishes just went trundling past when you weren’t looking.

In the dumpling category, you should not miss the potstickers, which are light and juicy. Lion’s head soup (two fat, light balls of chopped pork draped in cabbage so that each ball looks as if it has a mane) is a delight--and the greaseless, almost dry, spicy Sichuan noodles are delicious.

But this is still only a tiny part of a menu that provides some pretty intense reading. You’ll find Peking duck listed under a category called “roast meats.” If your party isn’t large enough to succumb to a whole Peking duck, order half of a tea-smoked one; the flavor is unlike any other food I can think of. (The deep smoky flavor is most reminiscent of that of a good single malt Scotch.)

Another heading simply says “salads.” Here you’ll find out-of-the-ordinary dishes such as warm snow pea pods in sesame oil or sliced bean curd tossed with carrots and celery in chile oil.

We still haven’t gotten to the entrees yet, and unless you have a very large group or a very large appetite, you may not either. That would be a shame--there are dishes here that you won’t find any place else. Lamb braised with garlic on a bed of spinach is robust, big-hearted food that hardly even seems Chinese. Thinly sliced pork arrives at room temperature with sliced cucumbers and a spicy garlic sauce. Breast of chicken comes topped with a spicy peppercorn sauce. On the other end of the flavor spectrum are shrimp that have been quickly sauteed with yellow chives into the most delicate dish imaginable.

The only real disappointments on the menu (other than the fact that some of the portions are rather small) can be found listed under vegetables. With the exception of a plain but satisfying steamed eggplant with garlic, soy and sesame, and a dish of sauteed baby bok choy with straw mushrooms, most of the vegetable dishes I’ve tried have been disappointing.

No disappointments await fans of the old Mandarin. Amid all these new offerings they will still find old favorites such as Mongolian lamb, orange peel beef, lemon chicken and whole sole that has been fried crisply and topped with a saute of its own meat and vegetables. They will even see Cecilia Chiang herself from time to time; when she’s in town you’ll find her hovering over the tables.

It is precisely this blending of the old and the new that makes the new Mandarin so interesting. Here is a restaurant serving real Chinese food that does not have its roots in Hong Kong or its heart in the past. With its partially open kitchen and its varied menu, the restaurant seems like a Chinese version of Chianti and Cucina, and there is nothing else like it in town. Philip Chiang may not be following exactly in his mother’s footsteps--but like her, he’s set off on a journey of his own.

Recommended dishes: Shredded pork wrapped in crepes, $7; pot stickers, $5.75; spicy sauce boiled won ton, $5.75; Peking duck, $35; kung pao chicken, $14; braised lamb with garlic, $14.