Szechuan survivors

Cambridge's Royal East and Restaurant Changsho have staying power

by Robert Nadeau

Royal East 782-792 Main Street, Cambridge (617) 661-1660 Open Sun-Thurs, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Fri and Sat, 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Full bar AE, DC, MC, Visa Sidewalk-level access Restaurant Changsho 1712 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge (617) 547-6565 Open Sun-Thurs, 11:30 a.m. to 9:45 p.m.; Fri and Sat, 11:30 a.m. to 10:45 p.m. Full bar AE, DC, MC, Visa Sidewalk-level access

So many culinary waves have broken over Cambridge in the past 20 years that it's hard to remember the days when Mandarin-Szechuan food was king. Returning this week to two survivors of the spicy-Chinese craze reminded me less of the excitement of reviewing them in the '70s and '80s than of the excellent value -- bang for your buck, flavor for your fiver -- these places offered by comparison to the overblown French restaurants of that time. And still do, by comparison with the avant-garde bistros of today.

Royal East, composed of a couple of big, relaxed rooms, has settled in as a dining-out spot for a mostly Asian crowd that I would typecast as suburban and mainly of Northern Chinese background. The menu, which still holds close to 1986 prices, never was purely Mandarin-Szechuan, and the kitchen does well with Cantonese dishes and a sprinkling of fancy Hong Kong presentations inherited from the previous restaurant in this space, the esteemed Colleen's Chinese Cuisine.

Restaurant Changsho is rather more pretentious and has wandered from the Szechuan concentration (and more modest quarters) of its early years. The crowd is all-ages white Cambridge; the space is broken up by pillars and steel sculptures that, though they presumably refer to some feature of Chinese architecture, have always reminded me of mounted moose heads.

Foodwise, I rank Changsho a little higher, mostly on the strength of a brilliant special of Chilean sea bass with ginger and scallion ($17.95). This is a terrific white fish with a flaky texture that hasn't quite found an ideal recipe treatment until now. Changsho took a big steak -- the size swordfish used to come in -- and lightly floured and sautéed it before steaming it with a light soy sauce and lots of shredded ginger and scallion. It's a standard Cantonese way with fresh whole fish that happens to develop even more flavor with this particular variety. Changsho also shone with salted and peppery calamari ($11.50). Impeccable squid chunks, another very gentle frying job, and sauce with a few sautéed hot-pepper slices made this simple and wonderful.

On what we'll call the "compulsory figures," Changsho scores 7.5 on a scale of 10. Peking ravioli ($4.95) were large and meaty, with appropriately thin skins, but without the ginger-scallion kick to the pork filling or much of a dip. Scallion pancake ($3.50) had some aroma of scallions and the slight crispness that rescues this fried bread from being too weighty. Chungking pork ($7.95), once a specialty of this restaurant, has lost most of its spicy heat. It used to be "twice-fried," too, but is now just a pleasant stir-fry of thinly sliced pork, whole black mushrooms, and red and green bell peppers.

General Gau's chicken ($7.50) is still pretty good, with fried chunks of actual meat (often croquettes elsewhere) in a dark sweet-and-sour sauce with traces of smoke and chili (don't eat the dried pods). It should have more ginger, though. Dry-cooked string beans were excellent for the fresh flavor of the beans and the hint of pepper. Lemon chicken ($10.50) was even more interesting. The chicken was a breast fried stiff and sliced into sticks, but the lemon was a bowl of sauce on the side with a tart, fresh lemon flavor I loved as a dip.

Tea and rice were nondescript, but the chocolate fortune cookies actually tasted like chocolate, which is a new one on me. Ignore the wine list with this kind of meal, but watch that list of food specials for seasonal vegetables and seafood.

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Royal East is in some ways both fancier and cheaper than Changsho. Stuffed eggplant ($4.75) is about as nifty a thing as you can order anywhere in Boston for the price. The eggplant slices were about the size of thick hamburgers, stuffed with a thin meaty layer, then batter-fried and cut into pretty canapés. They tasted good, too, although not as fresh as the eggplant in a special dish of shrimp-stuffed eggplant in black-bean sauce ($7.25). With vegetables this delicious, I'll overlook the lack of stuffing and the weak sauce. Royal East also excelled on a special of "spicy hollow green" ($7.75), which is a stemmy kind of green with a finer flavor than spinach, here in a thin gray sauce with a few sautéed dried chilies for a bit of pepper edge. Yu choy with oyster sauce ($7.25) was a kind of Chinese broccoli in a light oyster sauce that had plenty of flavor. The pan-fried sole (seasonal, recently $20.95 for a large one) achieved the correct mixture of juicy white meat and fins crispy enough to eat. A special on Shanghai noodles ($5.25) turned out to be a homey dish of fat spaghetti with ground pork and a few vegetables.

On the compulsory figures, Royal East scores slightly lower. Peking ravioli ($3.75) are cheap and large, but very bready and a little sweet. The suan la chow show ($2.50), a bowl of meaty won tons in a slightly spicy, saucy soup, costs what it did in my 1986 review but has lost the fire and intensity of the early years. You can get a better idea of this dish -- introduced by Colleen's and apparently restricted to Central Square -- at Mary Chung's or Pu Pu Hot Pot nearby. The scallion pie special ($3.75) was huge and crispy, but so overfried as to lose the scallion aroma. Their version of General Gau's chicken ($7.50) has real chicken cubes, but they were presented in an artificially pink sweet-and-sour sauce that would have the Hunan general calling for a court martial. Chicken with broccoli ($6.95) was perfunctory, with nothing overly fresh about it.

The steamed rice was above-average, the ice water notably bad, and the fortune cookies (with orange slices) crispy. Again, ignore the wine list; zero in on the daily white-board specials.

Both of these restaurants satisfy on many levels, especially if your meal consists of seasonal vegetables and one or two hits of expensive fish. If Changsho's food is a little better, Royal East offers a less crowded, less expensive experience; and you might do better than I did if you order what looks good on other tables. Royal East also wins on walk-to dessert: Toscanini's ice cream.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at robtnadeau@aol.com.