Spice China

At Spice China, Mok and his crew have essentially created two menus: one full of sesame beef and a really delicious orange-peel chicken, great handmade pork dumplings, wonton soup and mu shu everything, then a secondary menu that subtly pushes the more authentic cuisine of China and Shanghai on the unsuspecting or the brave. Here, the kitchen offers chilled plates of marinated jellyfish; beef tripe marinated in oil, garlic and onions that's served as a cold app; chicken marinated in wine; and duck packed in salt. Sometimes the staff (friendly, if slightly inept — like an entire crew imported from the closest Applebee's and suddenly made to sell Chinese radish soup and shrimp poppers) will say that the kitchen is out of these specialties. Sometimes, inexplicably, the kitchen just won't prepare them. But be persistent. Patience pays off.

And in the meantime, there's always the bourbon steak — a strange Chinese-American dish that has followed a process of reverse-assimilation, having first been popularized in China as a knockoff of an American dish, then moving back across the ocean to be served here as a Chinese classic. There are whole fish (striped bass, steamed or fried) and eel spiced with white pepper; delicious Shanghai-style shrimp, cooked in the shell and tossed with a creamy ginger sauce; and one of my new comfort-food addictions: sliced tofu, sliced prosciutto and gnarled bits of poached chicken tossed together, stir-fried and served in a huge, shallow bowl with a delicate ginger, lemon, clove and cilantro sauce.

Someday, when I leave Denver and go gallivanting over the horizon to come-what-may, I have no doubt that this will be among the dishes that I crave, that I search for, that becomes a new fixation as I haunt the strip malls and steamy alleys of wherever I end up, chasing after a Shanghainese flavor, dimly remembered, that I had once in a dining room in Louisville, Colorado.

The same place where I finally found my ideal Peking duck.