You Can Count on Flavor at China 88

The new China 88 in Laguna Beach is bound to be compared with Michael Kang’s groundbreaking Five Feet, as both restaurants specialize in modern, California-style interpretations of classical Chinese recipes.

Steven and Wendy Kwok, the personable couple who run China 88, aren’t encouraging any comparisons, though. Wendy, who greets all comers with a warm smile, says she’d like her restaurant to be judged solely on its own merits. The fact that Steven cooked alongside Michael Kang at Five Feet for six years, she says, does not mean that his restaurant is a spinoff of the one of his former employer. Besides, she insists, her husband has gone out of his way to put a personal stamp on this menu.

So let’s simply classify China 88 as a modern, cozy room with a highly eccentric menu of Asian-inspired specialties and enjoy the concept for what it is.

The restaurant is tucked into the top level of a complex called Village Faire Shoppes--with an illuminated sign that is hard to spot for anyone driving south on Coast Highway. (The complex is between Oak and Brooks streets, about a mile south of downtown Laguna. The sign is far easier to see if you’re driving north.)

The decor is spare and comfortable: jet-black designer carpet, some nice floral sprays, crisp white linen. The “A” tables--if there can be “A” tables in a restaurant without a celebrity clientele--have to be the ones perched on a mezzanine, affording a bird’s-eye view of the street.

Oddly colorful fabric chairs and a huge blue-and-red neon sign depicting the letters MSG crossed out by a giant X may add the slightest hint of hip sensibility, but this place doesn’t look like an art gallery the way Five Feet does, nor are many of the diners from the art community. Yet.

Perhaps Kwok’s cooking will change that. He’s a Cantonese who once taught music in his native China, and, as you’ve just guessed, a man committed to the banishment of that nasty white chemical flavor-enhancer from his cooking. That’s a doubly good thing here, because if anything, Kwok’s food often has too much flavor for its own good. He just loves to gussy up foods such as mussels, shrimps and assorted meats with pungent plum or oyster or black-bean sauces, garnishing the plates with broccoli, sliced tomato, curled orange rind and whatever else strikes his fancy.

At lunch, these foods tend to come up simpler and more straightforward, allowing Kwok’s considerable skills to shine. The appetizers are all terrific, and special plates such as two-flavor moo shu and Peking noodles come charged with unusual energies.

The pot stickers are really chicken pot stickers, with that crisp and juicy pastry wrapper that makes the snack so irresistible. The minced chicken filling is light and dense, and there is a great spicy dipping sauce to further liven up the pot stickers.

Two more appetizers--steamed bao and ha gow (shrimp dumplings)--come in a bamboo steamer, but they are a whole lot cleaner than what you’d get up in Westminster. The bao are juicy Shanghai-style dumplings, and they are the best thing Kwok prepares. Contrast them with the very un-Chinese chili relleno--filled with goat cheese, coated with cornmeal, something you’d expect in a Southwestern restaurant such as Kachina--and you’ve got an eclectic lunch that could only be found in Pacific Rim California.

Peking noodles are an interesting amalgam of al dente egg noodles and a spicy meat ragu. Perhaps New Agers appreciate the fact that Kwok uses an abundance of dried tofu in this meat sauce, but I do not. The dish is a classic in northern China, and I like it better in the original tofu-less form. Moo shu two flavors, though, is an innovation that works well. Kwok blends tiny bay scallops with bay shrimp in a mass of shredded winter vegetables, then serves it in a delicious pancake. You add the plum sauce.

In the evenings, it’s a different story. Many of the dinner entrees are maddeningly elaborate in ways you wish they weren’t. Fresh king salmon is poached in a champagne, ginger, leek and lemon grass sauce, topped with a black mushroom salsa and two or three delicious wild mushroom ravioli, which are the best thing about this dish. Lamb two flavors is a grilled lamb chop in an overly sweet Mongolian sauce based on red wine, onion and star anise, alongside a crepe filled with lamb moo shu.

The perfectly wonderful medallions of filet mignon are obscured by a topping of grilled sweet onions and mozzarella cheese, when the meat would be unassailably fine without all the fuss.

Even Kwok’s first-rate kung pao specialty, an off-menu combo of chicken and shrimp, is a little overenthusiastic. It’s a skillful melange of white-meat chicken, large tiger prawns and magically crisp peanuts in a fine chili brown sauce shot through with fresh scallions. It’s just that the chef tends to make it with far too much sugar, caramelizing the meats but making your teeth throb at the same time.

Desserts are far more Western than any mere Chinese restaurant would ever serve, and often nearly as artful as befits a Laguna restaurant. There is a good white and dark chocolate mousse cake, a delicate chocolate sponge cake with coconut icing, even homemade cheesecakes (e.g. an exotic tasting banana-lemon model), all dished up with swirls of creme anglaise and flourishes of whipped cream.

I just wish China 88 would sacrifice a little presentation for a soupcon of simplicity. That’s the secret of great Chinese cooking, after all, MSG or no MSG.

China 88 is moderate to expensive. Starters are $3.50 to $6.50. Entrees are $8.95 to $15.95. Desserts are $4.95.

* CHINA 88

* 1100 S. Coast Highway, Laguna Beach.

* (714) 494-7688.

* Open for lunch Monday through Friday 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; dinner Sunday through Thursday 4:30 to 9:30, Friday and Saturday till 10:30.

* American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted.