The Mei generation

>> Dimsum, duck and good coffee at Café Chinois

by SARAH MUSGRAVE

Since the Asian restaurant invasion of the late '90s, it seems you can't swing a dead cat without hitting some new noodle emporium or sushi bar. With 13 years in the business under its belt, Mei Café Chinois can consider itself a granddaddy of Montreal's Oriental cuisine scene, boasting a relaxed atmosphere, a loyal clientele and delectable dishes that guarantee its staying power.

As a result, this St-Laurent eatery gives off a sense of unworried confidence. First of all, it assumes a certain sophistication on the part of its guests--only chopsticks, no forks on the tables. Secondly, it assumes patrons will be comfortable navigating the menu's sporadic numbering system--with items referred to in logic-defying terms like #886(37). Despite our insistence on naming the dishes we wanted, the waitress proved to be a human calculator, nonchalantly reeling back a series of numerals at a rapid-fire pace without writing them down.

We started our meal with selections from about 30 choices of dimsum ($3-5). For most of us, these tasty little dumplings are reserved for weekend fare (leading to speculation from dubious sources that dimsum is an abbreviation of dimanche/Sunday). But they make great appetizers, appealingly presented in traditional bamboo steamers. We sampled the plump, satisfying pork pot-stickers as well as the shrimp balls on cloud ear mushrooms, which combined a distinctly nutty flavour with the sweet pink puffs of shrimp. The accompanying dipping sauce was thick and tangy, with a hint of molasses.

Wonton soup is the Great Wall between high-end and low-end restos, and again Mei demonstrated how good this standard can be. The light broth peppered with generous-sized wontons, topped with slivered ginger, shredded pork, green onions and thinly sliced lettuce, was satisfying and palate-cleansing.

For the main courses, we opted for roasted duck ($9.95) and a seafood stir-fry. The duck, which has a bad rap as chicken's flabby cousin, was surprisingly unfatty--blackened and crispy on the outside, yet so tender that the meat was falling off the bone. It was served with sweet ginger sauce, similar to the dimsum dipping sauce but with an added kick.

The stir-fry of shrimp, scallops and vegetables--the most expensive menu item at $13.95--was also exquisitely cooked. The fresh flavours of the seafood, red and green bell peppers, water chestnuts, celery, straw mushrooms and onion shone through the black bean sauce, which was a little on the salty side--but nothing a sip of Tsingtao beer couldn't cut through.

We finished off the meal with the anticipated fortune cookies. A further bonus was that, true to its name, Café Chinois offers quality espresso and café au lait.

If it was located a few blocks west near the upscale eateries of Outremont, Mei's mustard-yellow walls and communal wooden tables could easily seem like the backdrop for some yuppie sitcom. But situated as it is on a less-gentrified block of St-Laurent, the atmosphere is cozy and unpretentious. Like the food (if not the menu numbering), the décor is well thought-out: large windows look onto the street without making you feel that you're in a fish bowl and you can watch the cooks manipulate giant woks in the open kitchen without being distracted by the sizzling.

But more remarkable was that all the dishes we sampled would have been extremely tasty without the accompanying sauces. Mei achieves an unusual balance between the over-sweetened Westernized cuisine we know and love, and the earthy, pungent flavours of homestyle Chinese cookery--a comfortable place between artsy and authentic.

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Mei Café Chinois

Address: 5309 St-Laurent

Phone: 271-5945

Hours: Mon-Thurs 11am-11pm; Fri 11am-11:30pm Sat 4-11:30pm; Sun 4-11pm

Best features: features: Fresh food, pleasant atmosphere, dimsum, coffee

Alcohol: Yes

Vegetarian friendly: Yes, better if you eat seafood

Wheelchair access: Street level

Credit cards: Yes

Price: $18/person before tax, tip and drinks

Rating: *** out of ****