Happiness! This is simple, well-prepared food. No elaborate sauces to mask inferior preparation or ingredients, and no impossible combinations. Most of the menu is dim sum prepared to order- chinese tapas, if you’ll forgive the juxtaposition. Small dishes (many are not so small) come out whenever they are ready, and after a few, you’re full. [but you’ve probably still got a couple more dishes on the way, and you’ll eat them anyway.]

The service is cheerful if a bit flaky, and all and all it makes for a very pleasant dinner.

And yeah, the potstickers rock. As does the fried chicken soup. And the onion pancakes, and...

I’m loathe to dine without my parents at most Chinese restaurants, but I’ll happily go to A&J. ’nuff said.

-dave

Once upon a time I used to love Chinese food. Steve and I would eat out (or get carryout) at least twice a week, and I had a real wok, and learned to cook some good Chinese food in it. Then, rather suddenly, I got bloody sick of it. Every time I ate Chinese food it seemed salty, overcooked, gloppy, brown, and mostly tasteless. I declared hatred upon it. For many years now I have given in to social pressure maybe every six months or so and with great reluctance eaten Chinese food. Or I would choose Chinese in a fit of nostalgia. I was usually disappointed.

Well, I’ve seen the light, and it is northern Chinese dim sum, as prepared by A and J in Rockville. At least, that’s what they claim to be. Others on food-plan can judge the authenticity of Chinese food far better than I. But frankly, I couldn’t care less about authenticity. That’s an issue for pseudo-intellectual food snobs. (Don’t say it.) What I care about is whether the food tastes good.

If memory serves, northern Chinese food is characterized by use of wheat rather than rice as the staple grain. I saw no rice in the restaurant today, but I saw noodles just about everywhere. When I ordered spicy beef noodle soup with wide, flat noodles, I wasn’t sure what I was going to get. I think I was expecting something like chow foon. But what came out was more like my mother’s homemade pasta: thick as well as wide, coarse-textured, almost doughy, and utterly toothsome and tasty. The broth was rich and beefy and slightly sour and spicy hot and just amazingly delicious.

Those same wheat noodles were also outstanding in a cold peanut sauce. We also ordered a cold dish of something tofu-like with peanuts and cilantro, and wontons in a spicy and sour sauce. And sweet pastry filled with red bean paste. All were wonderful, and, to use Phyllis Richman’s worked-to-death phrase, a revelation.

A and J is a bright, cheery, clean little place with no pretense; it doesn’t have that classic Chinese-American heavy dark wood and red velvet and gold decor that characterized so many restaurants in the 70s and 80s. The staff is efficient and all smiles. The patrons are all smiles, too. That’s always a good sign. I can’t wait to go back.