Hong Kong: Sun Wah BBQ

Sun Wah BBQ
5039 N. Broadway
Chicago, IL

When you see a restaurant with whole roast ducks hanging in the window you know you’re in for some good food. The updated Sun Wah space is a veritable palace of meat, with Peking duck window-dressing and a freakishly large menu pushing everything from Chilean Sea Bass to Pig Intestine. Upon entry there was already a massive queue in front of the takeout counter, but ample space to sit down inside.

You know you will be getting huge quantities of meat at Sun Wah, but the prices are even more killer. There is an entire page of meat combos that provide you with a choice of two of the following: duck/pork/beef/chicken with various sauce permutations on top of a mountain of rice. To start out with we ordered a bowl of Hot n Sour Soup ($4.25). The bowl was gargantuan and arrived in barely a few minutes. In quick succession the rest of our meals arrived: Salt and Pepper Chicken and BBQ Pork ($5), Roast Pork and BBQ Chicken ($5), BBQ Duck ($5).

The salt and pepper chicken was unfortunately a little “mystery” for us and contained what looked like a quarter of a chicken hacked into cubes, bones and all. The pork dishes were more successful, and the roast pork had a delicate flavor while the BBQ packed a sweet and sour punch. The duck came with a generous portion and was absolutely roasted to perfection.

One warning though: come for the food – but hang on to your plates. Before we got to shovel in even half of the hot and sour soup – it was unceremoniously removed from our table by the waitress who did not seem to respond to our desperate cries of “WAIT.” Even sans soup we still ended up with another full meal out of our leftovers. We were totally impressed by Sun Wah, the food was amazing, at any price, but seriously, hang on to your plates!