Peking City Express cracks the Chinese restaurant code Smoky and complex, bits of bone-in pork rib are breaded and artfully spiced with bits of mouth-searing, smoky, and deeply alluring hot peppers.If you’ve never wondered why so many Chinese restaurants use what appear to be very similar menus, you probably don’t get much Chinese takeout. The menus look alike, and the dishes are pretty much the same wherever you go.
What’s that about? It took me a lot of digging, but the often-reliable Internet finally led me to the secret: Most of the menus come from a group of printers packed into a few blocks in New York’s Chinatown, using newspaper-size printing presses to run hundreds of thousands of similar Chinese menus for the whole country!
This may help explain why most of Louisville’s 50 to 60 fast-food Chinese restaurant menus seem very much alike.
So if you drive past Peking City Express on Dutchman’s Lane, don’t let the smallish venue and that giveaway “Express” in its name prompt you to expect just another fortune-cookie-cutter fast-food Chinese joint.
This little place is a direct descendant of Peking City Bistro, one of the Ville’s top fancy-Chinese spots in the ‘00s. It’s perhaps able to serve 20 diners at capacity, and much of its business appears to be takeout and delivery. It’s worth sitting down, though. It still excels with both an authentic Chinese menu and a more standard Chinese-American bill of fare that still contains some surprises; it’s all elevated by the hand of an exceptional Chinese chef.
Peking City’s regular menu might remind you of the Chinese-restaurant standard, but it’s not nearly as voluminous with only about 60 items. Pricing is a bit above the Chinese-American standard, but not enough to rank it as a pricey establishment: Virtually every dish is $9.95 to a maximum of $12.95-$13.95.
We came for the authentic menu, though, and you should too. It’s available on request, and doing so seems to place you among the cognoscenti. It, too, offers about 60 items and is fully bilingual in Chinese and English. ...
Read the complete article on LouisvilleHotBytes,
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/peking-city-express You'll also find this review in LEO Weekly's Food & Drink section today.
http://www.leoweekly.com/category/food-drink/Peking City Express Chinese Cuisine4000 Dutchmans Lane
891-0388
facebook.com/peking01
Noise Level: Decibel readings stayed at conversational levels throughout our visit.
Accessibility: The small dining room appears fully accessible to wheelchair users.