New Restaurant in La Jolla : Chinese Cuisine Arrives by the Way of Des Moines

Although not quite an internationally acclaimed capital of good eating, San Diego can boast chefs and cooks from Paris, Brooklyn, Rome, Hong Kong, Florence, Tokyo, Athens, Oaxaca, New Orleans and hundreds of other large and middling dots on the globe.

With the opening of the new Pei’s of La Jolla, the city’s roster of restaurant origins has expanded to include Des Moines, Iowa, where restaurateur James Pei has operated a Chinese restaurant since 1979.

An employee at Pei’s (pronounced pies , as in a la mode) who previously worked at the Des Moines establishment said that restaurant has 300 seats, enjoys enormous popularity and is “packed all the time.”

The question that naturally arises is, can 200,000 Des Moinesians be wrong?

The answer would seem to be, on occasion.

Within days of Pei’s opening, word flew around the restaurant community that a Chinese restaurant of unusual and even extraordinary elegance had arrived to challenge not only other Chinese houses, but also La Jolla restaurants generally. And, with its marble entry, crisp linens, fresh flowers and graceful decor, Pei’s is handsome.

Few Exotic Touches

Pei’s menu announces that the restaurant serves “distinctive Mandarin cuisine.” This claim aside, the employee shared the information that, in Des Moines, the two overwhelmingly popular dishes are garlic chicken and Mongolian beef. After sampling both of these over the course of three visits, the impression was gained that Pei’s speaks Chinese with a twang more distinctively Middle American than Mandarin.

Both dishes were, in fact, quite good, if not exotic or particularly sophisticated. There was good authority to the garlic chicken, the flavor breathy but not overpowering, the diced chicken demurely mated with mushrooms and water chestnuts. The Mongolian beef, teamed not only with the usual scallions but also with savory chunks of onion, was succulent in the real sense of the word, and seemed not unlike a good steak smothered in onions.

If anything, a sort of Sunday supper calmness characterizes much of the cooking, which sometimes is sedate to the point of seeming sedated. The food is served abundantly and with some style, but the addition of a little verve would make it better.

The page of specialties that opens the menu, for example, sometimes promises more than it delivers. This is true with dishes designated as spicy and hot, which are sometimes incendiary and sometimes bland, a situation that robs the designation of reliability.

A case in point is the “princess” prawns, described as “deep-fried large prawns blended with our special hot sauce.” The fact of this description was a plate of greasy, batter-fried shrimp, served with a bowl of sweetish, sticky sauce.

There are good dishes on the specials list, though, most notably a pair made with beef. The orange-flavored beef, which many local restaurants prepare with varying success, consisted of crisply fried shreds of meat coated with a deeply pungent sauce based on dried tangerine peel. The dish, called “Pei’s beef,” consisted of thin slices of very tender meat that seemed to have been lightly breaded in minced garlic, and the finished product had a deep, fine flavor.

Homemade Touch

The appetizer list amounts to a roll call of old acquaintances, some of them friendlier than others. There are acceptable won ton, for example, and the dubious but delightful crab Rangoon pastries (because they contain cream cheese, they seem Chinese only by virtue of their won ton skins, but they are delicious), as well as barbecued pork and spareribs and rather tasty teriyaki beef. Egg rolls had the virtue of being homemade, and were likable for the fresh cabbage in the filling; too many eateries these days resort to the frozen commercial variety, which fry up mushy and awful. Pot stickers are plump and juicy, but served simply with soy sauce, another example of Pei’s Midwestern bent. Dumpling aficionados know that these tasty packages must be accompanied by soy sauce enlivened with gingered vinegar and chili oil. The special won tons billed “spicy hot” were exactly that.

The kitchen also turned in a mixed performance with the more standard entrees listed under meat, fowl, seafood and vegetable headings. The pork moo shu filling is light and savory and the pancakes tender and tasty. Snow white chicken is a similarly satisfying dish, a simple combination of sliced chicken breasts, Chinese forest mushrooms and vegetables that have great delicacy and are a wonderful prelude to something hot.

The hot dishes can disappoint, however, because they often are heated with red pepper flakes, which rasp the throat and provide heat without flavor. Szechuan “black paper” peppers perform the job much more subtly and would be preferable in such dishes as the ma la chicken, or slivered breast meat with mushrooms, and in the “fish-flavored” scallops, which added water chestnuts to the mushroom garnish but were less fishy than flavorless. The usual sweet-sours, soft noodle ( lo mein ) dishes and fried rices round out the entree selections.

Unlike most Chinese restaurants, Pei’s actually offers a wine list, and one of respectable length, although selections under $20 are in the minority. There are several light Chardonnays on the list that seem comfortable with Pei’s cuisine.

PEI’S OF LA JOLLA

7660 Fay Ave., La Jolla

456-6666

Lunch and dinner daily.

Credit cards accepted.

Dinner for two, with one glass of wine each, tax and tip, $30 to $60.