Cafe Anh Hong
1465 S. State St., Salt Lake City ; 801-486-1912
(see
map)
Good Cantonese dishes and delicious dim sum. Dim sum selection is larger on the weekends.
| Overall |
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| Food |
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| Mood |
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| Service |
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| Kid-friendly |
YES |
| Noise |
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Cuisine: Chinese
Price: $
Hours: M-F, 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m.; S-Su, 10 a.m.-10 p.m.
Liquor: None
Reservations: Not accepted/necessary
Accepts:    
Recommended Dishes: Dim sum: har gow, bean curd with beef, sesame balls; steamed sea bass, shrimp-stuffed eggplant.
January 6, 2006
Small plates of dim sum have a big taste
By Lesli J. Neilson
Editor's note: Today Lesli J. Neilson joins Mary Brown Malouf as a restaurant reviewer in an effort to provide Tribune readers with more reviews of Utah's dining scene. Look for her reviews the first Friday of every month.
From San Francisco to New York City, restaurants offering "small plates" -- smaller portions of an item -- are the hip, new places to dine. But the Chinese have been eating this way for centuries. Translated roughly as "touching the heart," dim sum is the ultimate small-plate food. And Cafe Anh Hong is crafting delicious dim sum and other Cantonese dishes.
The restaurant is sandwiched between a Hawaiian barbecue and a Korean restaurant in the Midtown Plaza strip mall on Salt Lake City's State Street. The décor is bare-bones, save for a few Chinese lanterns and murals, and a fish tank of live lobster and crab, but the two-room place is very clean.
Owner Jian Wu and his wife, Sherly, opened the restaurant in 1993. The clientele is mostly Asian and the menu is in English and Chinese, with daily specials listed near the door (in Chinese) and banquet menus on the wall at each table, portents of good things to come.
Dim sum is customarily eaten for breakfast or lunch and accompanied by tea. A cart full of small, stacked steaming containers is wheeled to your table once you're seated. Point to one and the lid is removed to reveal three or four small dumplings, buns or balls. If the dim sum looks and sounds intriguing, tell your server, and he'll place the container on your table and jot down the dim sum you've selected on the bill left at your table; if you decline, he'll continue to offer other dim sum until you're happy with what you've ordered.
Har gow (shrimp encased in a translucent rice flour wrapper), dipped in a bit of vinegar and soy sauce, was sweet and juicy. Siu mai (ground pork and green onions stuffed inside a wheat flour wrapper), though good-tasting, had been steamed too close together, making it difficult to separate the dumplings without tearing the delicate wrappers. Char siu bao (sweet barbecued pork tucked into steamed fluffy white buns) needed just a bit more of the toothsome filling in the tangerine-sized split bun. But bean curd (tofu skin), folded around ground beef and green onions and drizzled with a light brown sauce, was deliciously salty and savory. For a sweet ending, the sesame ball (glutinous rice flour formed around peanut paste, deep-fried and rolled in toasted sesame seeds) was a textural surprise, but the sesame and peanut flavors worked well together.
A dish of Chinese broccoli ($5.25), drizzled with rich oyster sauce, was a great palate cleanser between dim sum bites.
But the kitchen doesn't just excel at dim sum. The "house special duck sizzling plate" ($7.95) -- squares of tender duck skin and meat, broccoli florets, water chestnuts, snow peas, carrots, onions, celery and straw mushrooms -- didn't have any of the advertised sizzle, but the ingredients worked well together, despite too much sauce. The whole steamed sea bass ($14.95), resting in a slightly vinegary soy sauce and topped with fried julienned ginger and green onions, was the best dish on a recent evening. The tender meat flaked off the bones and paired harmoniously with the ginger and green onions. (The fish cheeks are a delicacy.) An intriguing-sounding dish of long, thin baby abalone strips with black mushrooms, carrots, onions and celery ($7.55) wasn't as successful and seemed one-dimensional except for the slightly chewy abalone.
Many of the best vegetable choices aren't on the menu. Slender Asian eggplant pieces ($8.95), cut on the bias and stuffed with a ground shrimp mixture, were served in a sauce with fermented soybeans, green onions and garlic. The combination of flavors was addictive, but the eggplant was drowning in too much sauce.
Café Anh Hong's Sandy location, 8650 S. 1300 East, couldn't be more different. Other than offering a small sampling of dim sum (made at the State Street location), the menu reads like any other ho-hum Chinese-American place.
Service at both locations is perfunctory but efficient, water glasses are routinely filled and dishes arrive at a good pace. One evening, it was refreshing to hear the owner chatting and laughing with a couple of longtime regulars in Cantonese. Makes me want to learn Cantonese and tell him how happy I am to have found his restaurant. Too bad I can't say that about the Sandy location.
Tribune's rating system
Overall rating
1 star Good
2 stars Very good
3 stars Excellent
4 stars Extraordinary
Entree price
$ Entree under $10
$$ $10-$18
$$$ $18-$25
$$$$ Above $25
Restaurant Noise
1 bell Quiet (under 65 decibles)
2 bells Can talk easily (65-70)
3 bells Talking somewhat difficult (70-75)
4 bells Raised voices (75-80)
A bomb Too noisy for normal conversation (80+)
The Tribune covers the cost of all meals at reviewed restaurants. Star ratings are based on a minimum of two visits. Ratings are updated continually based on at least one revisit. There is no connection between reviews and advertising.
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