The occasion of a new Tony Hu restaurant opening doesn’t always engender the kind of immediate clamorous response it deserves. Last year, for example, the opening of the bizarrely wonderful, Mao Tse-tung themed Lao Hunan was largely ignored by the media for weeks. That doesn’t seem to be case with his upcoming River North venture or Lao Ma La, the place he just opened in the old Lure Izakaya space (the seventh Lao restaurant in Hu’s empire).
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For years Spring World had been the city’s—and one of the country’s—only representations of the food of the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan, which is home to more ethnic minorities than anywhere else in the country. As a result of this diversity, the food of the region, which borders Sichuan province and Tibet, as well as Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar, is frustratingly difficult for outsiders to get grip on.
For all that you won’t find some of the foods Yunnan is most renowned for—no yak broth hot pots, no pu-erh tea, and none of the storied Xuanwei ham used to flavor braises and stir fries. As at most of Hu’s restaurants, Sichuanese food is heavily represented.
Spring World had a hard-core fan base, but was hardly a household name. And it was an idiosyncratic place, which produced a sensational Ameri-Chinese kung pao chicken in addition to the rare stuff. Lao Yunnan is idiosyncratic as well. At lunch you’re likely to see more Chinese diners slurping up the Taiwanese beef noodle soup—niu rou mian—than the Yunnan-style steaming chicken in hot pot. Maybe nobody’s buzzing about it because little has changed—and, as a result, Hu’s relentless conquest of Chinatown remains benign.
2109 S. China Place 312-326-9966tonygourmetgroup.com
