John’s Shanghai
144 W. 46th St. (between Sixth Avenue and Broadway) (212) 391-0888
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Good, inexpensive restaurants are the hidden gems of Midtown. Those open for lunch and dinner seven days a week are even greater finds.
So it’s worth marking the coordinates of John’s Shanghai on your dining treasure map.
Nestled midblock on 46th Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues – convenient to Rockefeller Center and the Theater District – John’s features a sharp, genial staff serving an extensive array of Chinese specialties from before noon to at least 11 p.m. daily.
From the street, you can often see the wonton maker deftly wrapping dumplings in the front window, arranging his creations with military precision on a tray.
Inside, the long, narrow room is clean and spare, the main design element being a glass case filled with teapots.
For a very un-Manhattan tab of $6.95, you can lunch here on a combination of soup or egg roll and, for instance, saucy sesame-sprinkled chicken with broccoli. The specials are available until 4 p.m. (At dinner, there’s a $15 minimum per person.)
But midday specials are just the tip of the gently priced, over-250-item menu, where Shanghai-style dim sum and Mandarin noodle soups meet sliced fish with sweet ginger, camphor-wood and tea-smoked duck, and old favorites like General Tso’s chicken.
Scallion pancakes are a satisfying starter ($4.95), redolent of onion with a flaky golden exterior, and can be dunked in plum sauce.
Sichuan dumplings ($5.95) practically melt in your mouth, the ground pork bundles of supersilky dough dripping with oily, fiery peanut sauce.
John’s is justly proud of its dumplings. Mandarin noodle soup with any kind of dumplings ($7.95) is habit-forming, the kind of soul-warming comfort food that inspires cravings.
In it, you have your pick of sliced rice cake ($.75 extra) or one of six noodles, from cushiony, thick chow fun to sinewy stands of clear cellophanes, which are mixed with dark-green spinach leaves and bean sprouts.
This is topped with a trio of tender pouches plump with ground sweet shrimp (or vegetables, pork, chicken, beef or a chicken-seafood mix). A well-balanced broth hinting of ginger adds the finishing, soothing touch to this simple pleasure.
Deliciously different describes shredded bean-curd sheets with preserved cabbage and green soy beans ($8.25). This protein-lover’s feast combines sweet, crisp soybeans and mellow shreds of cabbage with bean curd that’s been flattened into long, fettuccine-like strands.
Wind up your meal with some pineapple chunks or the complementary orange sections and fortune cookie. Meanwhile, if John’s Shanghai puts you in mind of another famous dumpling maker, all we can say is, “Look out, Joe.”