Although Patrick and I spent a considerable time at the Chinese supermarket, the true joy of the International Mall was in the food court. It seemed that each of the three restaurants in the food court had its own specialty: the leftmost one offered Taiwanese small dishes (xiǎochī; 小吃), while the one in the middle had Vietnamese noodles and fresh spring rolls. We decided to get ours from the Yu Ton Dumpling House (玉堂餃子館) on the right, however, trusting the large crowd that formed a line in front of its counter. As we waited for our food (for quite a while--the Dumpling House seemed to be hitting its lunch peak), I looked around. The entire food court, which sat probably around a hundred or so, were filled to the brim, with Chinese and Taiwanese families. As far as I could tell, there were only two Westerners, with one being Patrick. I couldn't have told if there'd been a few non-Chinese East Asians like myself mixed in the crowd, but I was pretty certain that we were the only group there without anyone who spoke Chinese.

Which posed a small challenge: when our food came out on a tray, I noticed that seafood congee wasn't there. I tried to communicate this to the young guy behind the counter, who looked at the order slip and understood my concern. He nodded, pointed at the slip and said something in rapid-fire Chinese, smiling at me. (He was very nice.) Not understanding any of what he said, I made a face--a universal sign of "what?" He looked at me with his eyebrows twisted, his eyes clouded with genuine concern. He repeated what he said again, which of course I didn't get. Then, one of the customers in line, a woman with a long hair swaying down to her waist, stepped in.

"He'll call you when it's ready," she translated. Ahh, I said, and thanked her. The guy seemed relieved, as I turned to carry the tray to our table. Wondering how we would recognize that we were being called when we were, I walked back to Patrick through the maze of tables and other customers with their own trays of food.

Soon, the same, gentle-looking guy behind the counter called out our number (in Chinese), and realizing that we don't even understand simple numbers, started to wave his hands at us. My seafood congee was ready.

With a chive bun, fried dough (which they called "twisted crullers"), dessert tofu (tofu fa, 豆腐花), and a house special of fried tofu and pork in black bean sauce--on top of that delayed congee, we definitely went overboard. But that was an overdose worth every bit of calories.

I don't even know where to begin--it was all very tasty, perhaps with the exception of the congee, which I'd had better ones. So, I guess I can start with the stuff in the first photo. Though (relatively speaking) not so rare in Chicago's Chinese food scene, the fried tofu in black bean sauce was fantastic. Something in the dish--maybe the tender, pouchy tofu--made it seem more down-to-earth Chinese food that might be served at someone's home. It may have been the sauce, too, that seemed a little homier than your usual restaurant kind.

But the real fun was in the items that appeared in the "weekend breakfast menu." I was apprehensive that the fried dough might be too oily and heavy, but that proved a worry over nothing. The oil only gave the dough a satisfying flavor and was never overpowering. I have no idea how they make it so un-oily, but it was. The flour dough was slightly salty and slightly sweet, with the reassuringly comforting flavor of the wheat flour. It was sort of like a toughened-up version of a really good "cruller" type doughnut. Quite a few people were dipping them in bowls of soy milk, but the fried dough was excellent by itself. It was huge--more than a foot long and three inches across--but I could have eaten the whole thing without any problem (other than my rapidly expanding waist line, that is).

The chive bun was a steamed-then-fried bun with chives and glass noodles. Compared to the sublime simplicity of the fried dough, the chive bun may not have been as good (a bit too heavy on the artificial MSG flavorings, and the bun itself could have been better), but it was still very, very good. Again, I could have eaten the whole thing, although it, too, was on the humongous side. Yu Ton Dumpling House must go through a scary number of chive buns and fried doughs; as I waited for our food by the counter with other customers milling around and constantly fetching their food, I probably saw 50 fried doughs and 30 chive buns come out of the kitchen, only to quickly disappear somewhere in the hands of happy customers. No wonder they tasted so fresh.

Now, all these were very good, but what really made my day was the tofu fa. Just around the time I left Japan in 2003, a boom of Hong Kong sweets was starting to happen. I never had a chance to try any of the interesting-sounding sweets, but I did have enough time to pick up bits of information on them. Made of familiar ingredients like sesame seeds, read beans and coconut milk, the Hongkonese desserts still sounded fascinatingly different. Tofu fa was among them. I'd been meaning to try one, but somehow never got around to it. Imagine my excitement, then, when I found two variations of tofu fa listed in the breakfast menu.

One option was the deluxe version with everything on it, but I opted for the other one with simply one ingredient: peanuts. It was (again) on the gigantic side. Bathing in a brown, chilled syrup was a few large pieces of very delicate and silky tofu, topped with peanuts boiled in the said syrup. (I photographed it, but it doesn't look as good as it tastes.) The ivory-colored tofu in tofu fa is much softer and smoother than normal tofu, but it has the same distinctive flavor of the soy beans. I was surprised by how well that tofu flavor works with sweetness: the tofu flavor gave depth to the potentially flat sweetness of the syrup. But this is not to say that the syrup was merely sweet, flavorless liquid; it was quite peanutty, which then complimented the tofu. All in all, my first tofu fa was a refreshing dessert. It would be an awesome replacement for morning yogurts, I thought, if I could get it around where I live.

We felt compelled to take a nice, long walk through the forest of the Morton Arboretum after this extravagant meal of $16. Stuffed to the brim and nothing less than euphoric, we scrambled into the car and drove to the Arboretum, where we did take a little walk in a quiet prairie at the Western end of the park. (A huge flock of yellow flycatchers!) I liked the Arboretum a lot, and we're thinking about going back with our bikes--the meandering, shaded, slightly hilly trails seemed perfect for a leisurely bike ride. And when we go back there, we're definitely getting those fried doughs again. One for each of us, next time.

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Yu Ton Dumpling House
International Mall
665 Pasquinelli Dr., Westmont, IL
630.323.2329
As a side note, the Dumpling House occupies two stalls in the food court. Next door to the ordering counter, they had half a dozen extremely fresh-looking Chinese vegetables for sale, which seems to assure the freshness of the ingredients they use.