Even for the Strip, China Spice would be considered hot as far as Chinese restaurants go. But here in Green Valley, this concept borders on incendiary.
Most of us who seek authenticity in an Asian restaurant are resigned to making the pilgrimage to West Spring Mountain Road, where most of these restaurants are located. So, a good Chinese restaurant in a neighborhood casino like Green Valley Ranch is a real plus, especially for those of us who live in ethnic restaurant-poor Henderson.
Ironically though, the newly opened P.F. Chang's adjacent to the casino is blowing China Spice away in terms of volume, and that's a pity because the casino restaurant offers a quietly attractive ambience and great bang for the buck. The food is excellent, prepared by a team of Asian chefs, a few of whom defected from the hugely upscale Pearl in the MGM Grand, along with the restaurant's likable general manager, Tony Lee, a real pro.
This is a handsome place, adorned with a parquet floor, backlit wooden shelves housing colorful Chinese pottery, lots of stonework, and bulbous chandeliers that glow a soft yellow, giving the room a deco-style aura. Waiters are clad in black, and peering into the kitchen, I was able to see a team of young Asian chefs madly wokking away, baseball caps on backward.
The menu hits a lot of right notes, and the few wrong ones are easily avoided once the general theme becomes clear. Minced chicken with crystal lettuce wrap is a dish you also can get at P.F. Chang's, but here the kitchen uses pine nuts, expensive but a mandatory component of the dish in Asia, whereas their rivals do not.
Salt-and-pepper squid is another good starter, although the batter is puffy like Japanese tempura, and the additions of fresh, minced red chili and scallions add a dimension to the dish that may make it too incendiary for some people.
I've always wondered what happened to the crab in crab Rangoon, a dish invented by Trader Vic's but ruined by Panda Express, where they took out the crab. Well, it's baaaack. China Spice uses lots of crab meat in the filling, which is based on a cream-cheese spread, and the wontons have such a nice crunch that I won't say too much about this being a completely Western dish.
Pan-fried pot stickers are completely fine, served with a hot ginger-soy dipping sauce, and moo shu pork is a steal at $5.95: four scallion pancakes into which the server spoons a mixture of wok-charred veggies laced with diced pork and a dash of hoisin sauce, a thick, pungent plum sauce that gives the dish a nice roundness.
Greater bargains lurk. This has to be the only place in the Valley that sells real Peking duck, air-dried, crisp-skinned, gorgeously lacquered duck, for only $12.95 a half order ($24.95 whole).
And it is done right. The servers bring the bird to the table uncut, cut the skin and meat off in the kitchen, and serve it in pancakes with the carcass left to pick over. I've had $50 Peking duck on the Strip presented and then served in buns or pancakes, only to be told that the rest of the duck had been thrown away. Yeah, right.
Just for fun, I ordered the Chinese-American classic, egg foo yung, sort of an omelet drenched in unspeakable brown gravy. In actuality, it was the shrimp egg foo yung, and to my surprise, after I had scraped off the gravy, the eggs tasted pretty good on top of steamed white rice.
There were no such problems with either the Yang Chow fried rice, made with a combination of barbecued pork and shrimp; or beef chow fun noodles, flat rice noodles sautéed with bean sprouts, black beans, chunks of onion and big slabs of tender beef. Both dishes were equal to what you get on Spring Mountain Road, and at a similar price.
The menu's vegetable section features good, tasty stir-fries, such as stir-fried asparagus, stir-fried long beans in XO sauce (a dried scallop-based pungent sauce), and for only $4.95, a dish of pan-fried garlic spinach that would have made Popeye leap for joy. There also is an oily version of Szechuan eggplant, a boring snow pea and canned water chestnut combo; and the dreaded mapo tofu, a spicy, home-style version of the hated and feared bean curd. (I like tofu, so there.)
One thing China Spice has which I can assure you will not be found across town are snazzy desserts: a sumptuous molten chocolate cake with a raspberry truffle center; chilled, refreshing stewed litchi fruits with tangerine sorbet; and a Tahitian vanilla-bean ice cream astride a pile of tempura-battered bananas doused in cinnamon-caramel sauce.
Considering gasoline prices these days, it may be awhile before Chinatown is a viable option for me.