For Patrick's birthday, my parents had planned a Chinese lunch on Saturday. We dropped the stuff we got from the annual organic plant sale in my parents' backyard and drove off to the restaurant in Glenview.

"Their food is really authentic," my mom raved in the car. "It may not be as good as in Chinatown, but you wouldn't think it's a restaurant in a suburban mall." Even with her rave review, I was skeptical, and so was Patrick, who politely kept his mouth shut. But we were to be pleasantly surprised. The food at the restaurant owned by a Taiwanese family, misleadingly named Szechwan North, was fantastic.

It was before noon when we walked into the dimly lit, overly decorated restaurant (there was a giant jade sculpture of a dragon-shaped sailing ship, about three feet tall, in the entrance, to give you an idea). A middle-aged man with decidedly unfashionable glasses came out from the back, and greeted my father, who immediately struck up a conversation. They both spoke stuttering English, but seemed to be having fun. The man told us (via my father) that he was from Taiwan, but named the restaurant Szechwan North because of the name recognition. My father told him that he'd been to Taiwan several times on business, and mentioned the name of an entertainment district in Taipei, which cracked up the restaurant owner. After a bit more of lively conversation, my father got beer for all of us, and the owner disappeared to the kitchen, still smiling.

The disappearance of the owner was immediately followed by an appearance of a similarly middle-aged woman in a white shirt and black apron. Strikingly red lipsticks seemed a little out of place on her otherwise childlike face. She hastily gave us menus, placed plates and chopsticks on our table, promised us to come back with water and disappeared quickly. Then, another woman, this time in a loose, white, collarless shirt and with her long hair tied into a pony tail, approached our table.

To my surprise, she started to explain what she had at hand for the day. She could steam a fresh, two-pound water pike she just purchased this morning and dress it with her special sauce. We should add a plate of stir-fried pea sprouts, she said, which she also got this morning. We nodded our heads in agreement, half perplexed by the burst of attention we were unexpectedly receiving. To those main courses, we added a bunch of goodies and waited with excitement. The brisk recommendations by the staff made it feel like we came to our regular hangout, where chefs and staff knew what we liked and cooked to our taste. The only thing we ordered right off the menu was our appetizer.

My parents got hot and sour soup, and the younger generation (us) got chicken corn soup. Both were excellent. The hot and sour soup was hot and sour (duh), but it didn't have the nasty, stinging sourness that I'm not very fond of. Our chicken corn soup was a true comfort food, with the slight sweetness of the corn and the robust flavor of from the chicken. I loved the thick texture of the soup as well.

This is the only thing we ordered off the menu: scallion pancakes. The thin wheat pancakes had bits of scallions inside (could have been more), and were served with sweetened soy sauce and hot chili sauce. I think the pancakes were baked with sesame oil, and the combination of the sesame oil and the sweet soy sauce was fantastic in a junk-foodish way.

The female cook (or the woman we assumed to be one) seemed to know that Japanese people tend to order stir-fried noodles at Chinese restaurant. So she included a combo noodles in our main courses. The noodles was the least impressive of the dishes we had at Szechwan North, but that's not to discredit the noodles. They were decent noodles, but the competition was way too harsh for them.

To accommodate Patrick's deep love of black bean sauce, the chef cooked up stir-fried beef with black bean sauce. A dish not on the menu, it had plenty of succulent beef pieces along with fresh onions and scallions. The pungent flavor of the black bean sauce was balanced out with the soy sauce, fresh garlic and ginger, and some sugar. It was one of the best black bean sauce beef in my life. (The dish in the back is the pea sprouts--lightly stir-fried with chicken broth, ginger and garlic. It is truly amazing what a satisfying dish this could be, considering how simple it is...)

Then came the main course--the steamed water pike.

The cook herself delivered the fish, cut the tender fish with a fork and a spoon, and distributed the pieces to our ready plates. When she said she was going to steam the pike, I was slightly apprehensive: I've had enough bland steamed fish in my life. But it turned out that the fish was deep-fried before it was steamed, just to give it the kick of oil (which we're all addicts of) and to coat it with a layer of flour. This extra layer of flour worked as a sort of sponge that picked up the sauce, which otherwise would slide right off the fish. The sauce contained large chunks of ginger, scallions and whole cloves of garlic, and the fish was covered with yellow chives, cilantro and green onions. These aromatic ingredients eliminated the fishy odor that the pike might have had once in his afterlife and worked well with the soy-sauce-based brown sauce.

Mr. Pike disappeared pretty quickly, leaving only his cheek-less head wondering where the rest of his body went. (He was cheek-less because cheeks are often the tastiest part of a fish's body. They tend to be much more succulent and firm than any other parts of the body.)

The tab came out to be about $100 for the four of us (including alcohol and tip). According to my parents, they don't always shower you with recommendations and other assistance. We might have bee just really lucky, coming to it when it was empty; people who came after us were given regular menus and were pretty much left to their own. So, the two recommendations when visiting Szechwan North are A) go there for lunch, and go there early to catch their "we're so bored, we want customers to chat with" mood, and B) if you're lucky enough to get this kind of attention, follow their advice, and don't hesitate to ask for stuff you like (like Patrick did).

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Szechwan North
2857 Pfingsten Rd., Glenview, IL
847.272.0007