Meiwah Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

For about a year, I've been wanting to go to Meiwah Restaurant on the busy corner of New Hampshire and M by 21st Street, but my friend Leo, a Hong Kong native, has always deferred, thinking we should go someplace else. I could never figure out why he didn't want to go there, since it always seemed to be a thriving hot spot every time we walked past it. Recently, though, he has responded to my questioning a little more and I determined that his reservations were two-fold: he suspected that it was yet another "touristy" Chinese place designed for the American palate and, more importantly, he was bothered by the restaurant's names.

Names? Well, actually, it's a little more complicated and esoteric than that. Apparently, there is a discrepancy between the English and Chinese names the restaurant displays in neon in its windows. The English version says "mei-wah," whilst the Chinese characters say "wahl-kurn." Not knowing any Chinese, I asked if that was Mandarin or Cantonese, and he said it didn't matter, since the characters were the same. Okay, fine, I'll leave it to the Chinese to read and understand their 3,000-plus character alphabet. I also asked about whether the two names meant different things, and apparently both words are proper names, with mei-wah being more typically feminine and wahl-kurn being stronger and more masculine.

Well, masculine or feminine, I'm glad we finally ate there last night, since I enjoyed the food and restaurant, and will likely return another day.

Meiweh is situated right on the corner of the street level of an office building at a busy six-way intersection. The two street sides of the establishment are fully revealed to the public with floor to ceiling window walls that display the dining room and bar. Inside, the space is comfortable and contemporary with several dividers helping to create the illusion of greater privacy. Some of the decor includes nicer looking Chinese art, plus there are several swaths of potentially appetite-ruining photographs of politicians—the owner seems to like to have his picture taken with every senator or representative who comes to eat there.

The menu is interesting and varied and accommodates a number of common special diets, including an all-tofu supplement page for vegetarians and an Atkins-friendly section. They also offer brown rice as an option and the menu indicates the kitchen is willing to put sauces on the side.

For some unknown reason, Leo started with a glass of red Rosemount Shiraz from Australia (he doesn't adhere to the traditions of white wines with seafood); I chose the iced jasmine tea, which was quite strong and bitter from a long steep. The food began to arrive in traditional Chinese style, as it was prepared and finished in the kitchen, not in formal courses as Americans typically do. First to arrive was my seaweed salad. With a $3.95 price, I was expecting a tiny bowl, but the serving was easily twice the size of what I'm usually served in D.C. for nearly twice the price. The seaweed was fresh, crisp, and good, too, and also included a few julienned strips of cucumber. Next, Leo got his squid with spiced salt. The squid was in small pieces, lightly battered, and deep fried, with a little bit of garlic and chopped scallion stir-tossed in with the squid for flavor and color. I sampled a tiny bit of the scallion mix and got the surprise of the evening: I caught a piece of hot pepper that rendered me momentarily speechless!

For main courses, Leo got the Singapore noodles, a curried vermicelli with vegetables and lots of shrimp, scallops, and seafood pieces. He actually liked it! That's always a surprise, so since he liked their Singapore noodles, that gives the entire restaurant his official imprimateur. Still struggling with my Lenten vegetarianism, I had the General Tso's tofu, an enormous serving of fried tofu chunks with large scallion pieces and lots of szechuan peppers in a thick, sweet sauce; a mound of shredded iceberg lettuce garnished with a maraschino cherry decorated the side of the plate.

So, the long-avoided Meiwah was a success.

On the way home, we stopped at CVS, where Leo picked up a couple of pints of Haagen-Daz ice cream for dessert. It's so hard to diet around him!