I'm Chinese American. My parents were born in China, and I grew up in Los Angeles on a steady diet of Chinese food. I'm pretty particular about my Chinese food (I cook a decent number of Chinese dishes), so I wasn't planning on eating Chinese food in Venice...except I had a chance meeting with a Chinese woman close to the Giardini Biennale vaporetto platform where I was photographing at sunset. She had mentioned that there are more and more Chinese-owned restaurants in Venice and that more and more Chinese people are living in the area. I asked her if there was any good authentic Chinese restaurants in the area and she said to track down Nanjing restaurant (she said this to me in Chinese, and that's the name of Nanchino in Chinese).
Anyway, I was wandering around the area and I stumbled on Nanchino (honestly, I wasn't planning on seeking it out). The menu is huge and that always raises my suspicions, but when I walked in, there were 3-4 tables occupied, and every single one was occupied by Chinese people (they were all speaking Mandarin, which I speak and understand decently). And they had an insane lunch time menu--pick a starter, 1st course, and 2nd course for 12 euros. I wasn't planning on going out for lunch with the family, but we thought we'd give it a try as we're here a few weeks, and I know in advance that I'll crave Asian food since I couldn't easily cook it here in Italy.
So, we ordered 2 lunches (our kids had snacked in advance)--a potstickers, a steamed pork dumplings, a beef noodle soup, a stir fried chicken noodles, a mapo tofu (spicy tofu), and kung pao chicken.
The noodles came first--the beef noodle soup was large enough to be a meal in and of itself. It was spicy and the broth was full of deep flavor--and the noodles tasted fresh (not dried--we are in Italy after all...). My wife got the stir fried chicken noodles--plenty of small pieces of chicken and along with eggs that were tasty (they really do taste better over here)--simple, but well executed dish--the dish actually had flavor as opposed to dominated with an oil flavor that is typical in San Francisco.
Then we got the two Sichuanese dishes (very difficult to get right and authentic)--the mapo tofu and the kung pao chicken. The kung pao chicken was quite light, but the flavor was pretty similar to what I had eaten when I visited Chengdu (one of the major cities in Sichuan province in China) with very fresh Sichuan peppercorn, which is the key to authentic Kung Pao chicken (and lacking in 90% of Kung Pao chicken dishes I've eaten in the US). The mapo tofu was a bit off--the tofu tasted sour...usually when this happens, I think the tofu was spoiled/old. I very, very politely mentioned this to one of the people and said it tasted sour...he came back and apologized and said the tofu is supposed to taste that way (i.e., it wasn't bad) and explained that perhaps it was the difference between types of tofu. He said they were making us another tofu dish right away. He was very gracious about it and I felt well served (I don't always expect not get this treatment when I'm outside of the US). So, they brought out another tofu dish that was spicy with different ingredients. This was fried tofu with wood ear, peppers, and I generally dislike and avoid fried tofu. This tofu was delicious--it was fried on the outside, but not overly oily, nor overly crisp--it was gently fried (if that's possible) and the inside was super tender tofu, which is the texture I prefer for tofu. In short, this place changed my mind about fried tofu!
We paid extra for a bowl of rice and large bottle of water--out total bill for essentially 4 dishes and 2 appetizers was 31 euros--and for deliciously authentic Chinese food. I was thrilled, and my body was confused walking out of the restaurant in that it was full of tasty, authentic, delicious Chinese food and I was walking among the canals and campos again.
Last, it's a very clean, modern restaurant. They have wi-fi (fast enough I could stream Netflix so my kids were occupied and would let my wife and I eat in peace), air conditioning and clean bathrooms (not always the case at Chinese restaurants around the world!). I think I met the owner, and she seemed really nice and friendly (yes, it probably helps that I am Chinese and I spoke in Chinese).
Evidently, it's been open two months and she told me that a lot of the other Chinese restaurant owners in the area come there to eat--she didn't say this in a bragging way, but I told her I wasn't surprised as I told her their food was really, really good.
We will absolutely be returning a few more times during our trip here. read more
