Royal Dumplings

[January 26th, 2005] "Ah, it's called Wong's," my father-in-law says as we pull into the restaurant parking lot. "That was the name of the only Chinese restaurant in Klamath Falls when I was a kid."

The name of Wong's King Seafood Restaurant takes some of the sting out of my hauling him from Southwest Portland to Southeast 87th Avenue to check out the latest in a local chain of Chinese restaurants. The newest Wong's King, tucked back in a mini-mall, has wide double doors graciously opened for diners by smiling young women. Inside, there's a Cantonese-style banquet hall, a massive room with crystal chandeliers, tanks of live crabs and lobsters and one squirmy lingcod, and servers pushing carts holding whole roasted Peking ducks and dozens of dim sum selections.

Dinner starts with a complimentary dish of Spanish peanuts, toasted in a little oil; it's very good, but you'll want to save room for the house special won ton soup ($8)-pork dumplings and shrimp cooked just until they lose their translucence and are so snappy they squirt when bitten, in a broth whose depth says it's been simmering all day. Honey barbecue pork ($7) falls off its tiny bones. It's rich, the meat equivalent of chocolate, though not half as intense as roasted pig, the sweet russet meat made sweeter by a dip in hoisin, the thick strips of crunchy skin seeping salty oil and prompting my father-in-law to remark that designating pigskin a comestible is "a much better use than a football." Deep-fried salt-and-pepper calamari ($8) arrives in squares the size of postage stamps, the little packets cooked so fast there's just a hint of crunch. It's a wondrous dish, one that demands to be ordered again, yet on subsequent visits it's served overfried and underseasoned.

Wong's King's customers are almost all Asian, which may be why the staff hovers around the Caucasian diners with suggestions about the 150-plus-item menu: How about crab with ginger and scallion ($16)? Steamed in the shell, its legs and claws cracked, the crab is snow-white and moist, though the avocado-green chopsticks (ladies will have to resist slipping these into their purse for later use as hair ornaments) prove a poor tool for getting meat from the shell.

Easier to eat are Malaysian-style chow fun ($8), the wide rice noodles, slippery with a just-hot yellow curry and tossed with more of those lively shrimp. A separate dish of Japanese eggplant glows lilac beneath black bean sauce ($8). By dessert, there is no more grousing about driving "so far out on Division!," only happy family murmurs over complimentary bowls of tapioca with taro and coconut milk.

On the other hand, my companions on a recent Sunday morning are delighted with the proximity. They're a handful of dim sum fanatics who have taken to driving as far as Vancouver, B.C., for a dumpling fix. By 10:45 am, they're racking up plates of har gou (shrimp dumplings) and sui mai (pork and shrimp dumplings) and waving in the cart offering sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves that, when unwrapped, release an aroma of jasmine tea.

Creamy congee, or rice porridge, is studded with pork, chicken and mushrooms (dim sum range in price from $1.95 to $4.95); spareribs in a clear black-bean sauce look just like vertebrae, which stops no one from sucking them clean; pork buns, steamed and fried, disappear by the dozen, as do supple rice noodles filled with shrimp and scallions and splashed with soy sauce. Best of all are han sui gok, gelatinous rice balls packed around diced pork and deep-fried; toasty and sweet, they have the chew of deep-fried zeppole pastry.

By noon, the Lazy Susan at table's center is piled high with plates. But there's room for more tea, and an order of chicken paws in smoky chee hou sauce, and many dessert dim sum: quivering mango pudding; quarter-size pastry shells filled with milk custard; and one order, and then another, of tiny buns filled with yellow pastry cream. And the grace note: Eight of us have eaten for $112, including a 20 percent tip.