CHINITO!

Yeah, we’re a little late to the game, but damn… I think this is the best $8 I have spent on food in recent memory. The newly established Mission Chinese Food’s invention, the Peking Duck Chinito (also comes in Vegan!) is really, really great.

It’s duck confit, crispy skin, cucumber, cilantro, and spicy hoisin sauce. All of this is stuffed in a “chinese donut”, wrapped in rice noodle, then chopped sushi-style. What’s a chinese donut, you ask? I wasn’t sure either but once I saw it, I recognized it as the puffed, oily, bread stick that I would dip in rice porridge or warm soy milk as a kiddo, a food item that was previously known to me as (roughly) “Yao-Jok -Gwai“.

The blending of crispy duck, sweet hoisin sauce, donut, and soft rice noodle was something completely new, but still distinctly familiar. The Chinito might really catch on, and I would not be at all surprised if we see some copycats popping up within a year, much like the Korrito. Get in on the ground floor, folks.

The atmosphere at Lung Shan was interesting to say the least. The older, weathered Lung Shan staff seemed to be casually lounging in the dining area while these youngsters shuffled around their kitchen. Looks like I wasn’t the only one curious about this odd dynamic, as Chow asked about it in this recent article:

I just couldn’t get over the strange-bedfellow relationship of the old-school Chinese restaurant and nouveau Chinese restaurant. I asked Myint, who features a Lung Shan dumpling dish as a kind of homage on his own menu, whether Lung Shan chefs would be “trained” to make items off the Mission Chinese menu, too.

“They don’t really need our training,” he said, pausing to let the ridiculousness of the question sink in. “They’ve actually taught us some things.”

Bonus: The kind server threw in the Szechuan pickles free of charge, thus confirming your suspicion that us orientals hook each other up.

Previously:

Mission Chinese Food Is Open!

One Response to “CHINITO!”

  1. [...] one on the chinto, from Mission Mission. Filed Under: Today's Mission This entry was written by Lydia Chávez, posted on at 2:24 pm, [...]

  2. Mark 2000 says:

    I don’t understand what people see in this food. The chinito seemed like they microwaved it ready made out of the freezer. Cold on the inside. The Vegan delight was bland. The Lamb stew, on the other hand, was too spice to taste properly. And I love spicy.

  3. [...] point of interest for me was that it describes the fate of the beloved Chinito. My mom’s theory, being a Chinese restaurant owner herself, was: “It was probably just [...]

  4. [...] only a matter of time before this sort of mashup monstrosity was conceived.  We already have the Chinito (R.I.P.) and the Korrito, so logic clearly dictates a Japanese version as well (Vietnam gets a pass [...]