LEO's Eats with Robin Garr
“I went to Oriental House for lunch the other day, and we had a really good Chinese meal that didn’t cost us an arm and a leg.” This statement would have been perfectly grammatical, and factual, in 1960, and it still is.
Oriental House, whose ornate Chinese-style building has been a local landmark since at least as far back as the 1960s, was one of Louisville’s first Chinese restaurants, and is surely its longest-standing. In many ways, its core menu, too, remains true to those old days of chow mein, chop suey, fried rice and egg foo young — all of which, indeed, remain on the menu and affordable.
When new owners arrived in the early 2000s, they wisely didn’t change a thing about the place’s traditional menu or its exuberant retro decor of reds, golds and greens, Great Walls and dragons; but they endeared themselves to local foodies by adding on a full list of more authentic Chinese dishes — and dim sum bites — and, wonder of wonders, made it all available in English for Western diners.
By and large, for much of the past century, many Chinese restaurateurs, fearing Westerners would find their authentic dishes too challenging, dodged the issue by publishing the “menu-for-Chinese” only in Chinese, feigning incomprehension when asked pushy questions about authentic dishes. Applause to Oriental House (along with Peking City Bistro, Jasmine and a few others) for breaking down the wall and giving us a chance.
The other day, my friend Anne and I went by and enjoyed a delicious authentic lunch. A few days later, we joined a group of 10 to sit around one of those giant round tables, and enjoyed sharing from a broad range of dishes both authentic and “Chinese-American.”
Read the full review on LouisvilleHotBytes,
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/top-n ... ntal-house
And in LEO Weekly:
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/top-n ... ntal-house
Oriental House
4302 Shelbyville Road
897-1017
Rating: 88