Su Xing House, Philadelphia’s long running vegetarian Chinese restaurant has closed and been replaced by Chengdu Center City, an outpost of University City’s Chengdu Famous Food. Chengdu serves Sichuan style Chinese food but thankfully has kept a lot of Su Xing’s vegetarian dishes; the General Tso’s Seitan is excellent. Su Xing House will be missed a great deal, but I have been enjoying Chengdu a lot and Philly still has Unit Su Vege serving excellent vegetarian Chinese food.
The Dumplings: Chengdu has a good selection of dumplings and buns, several of which, including the steamed and pan-fried dumplings, are vegan. The steamed dumplings, which are filled with cabbage, carrot, chive, radish, green onion, ginger, garlic, and soy, were good, but not as good as remember Su Xing’s being. The Pork Wonton’s with Chili oil were very good, and I am definitely going to get these again. Part of what I liked about their wontons is that they had lots of excess noodle for the sauce to cling to. The chili sauce had lip and tongue tingling Sichuan pepper corns as an ingredient, which is unusual in this dish.
The star of the meal though was the, construct it yourself, Five Spice Pork buns. This dish arrives as a platter of sliced braised pork belly, a bowl of Hoisin sauce, slivered scallions and cucumber, and three white fluffy steamed Lotus leaf style buns. These buns are sort of clam shell shaped and have a horizontal fold that can be opened up so the buns can be stuffed with your choice of filling. This dish lets you build a bun with your personal mix of savory and sweet flavors and mix of pork meat and pork fat. My only complaint with this dish is that it only comes with three buns, while there is enough pork belly and greens to fill five or six buns.
The location: Chendgu Center City is on Sansom Street near the corner of 15th street. This block, between 15th and 16th street, is a row of excellent bars and restaurants. As an appetizer before going to Chengdu, I got a couple of happy-hour oysters at the Sansom Street Oyster House, which I highly recommend.
The search for the world's best dumplings 