Long Island Restaurants

Nanking

The distance between Beijing and Bangkok is 2,039 miles. Their cuisines: a light year apart.

Nanking, a shiny and stylized newcomer, tries to speed up the trip, serving fare from each with mainstream appeal. Come for your shrimp Cantonese and pad Thai, too.

They're served in a setting marked by copper tabletops and bamboo room dividers. The entire production is carefully choreographed to ensure you don't mistake Nanking for a routine neighborhood spot. There are three other Nankings in New Jersey.

Good service and often flavorful food define the Long Island link in the chainlet. While the kitchen occasionally lapses, there are plenty of reasons to enjoy dining here -- especially since you can count the area's better Chinese with two sets of chopsticks, and the county's top Thai with one.

So, have soup. Sample the sweet corn number with chicken or the non-medicinal hot-and-sour production. The lively lemon-coriander soup with mushrooms also stands out.

A refreshing papaya salad with tamarind sauce; mild, steamed dumplings, filled with either vegetables, chicken or shrimp; and fried vegetable dumplings with onions and a chile-garlic sauce head the appetizers. "Crispy lotus" brings in crunchiness, but the stir-fried stems with onions are stuck in a syrupy, overly sweet, honey-based sauce.

Kai chi, or marinated chicken wings with chile sauce, improve the openers. The chicken satay, while tender, could use a livelier peanut sauce. Skewered, grilled shrimp benefit from a chile-and-garlic marinade. The grilled lamb chops are recommended, too.

Lamb Sichuan, sliced and tender, spices up the competition, which includes Thai lamb curries and stir-fried lamb with ginger. But meaty, moist sliced duck is overwhelmed by barbecue sauce. You're better off with the Thai chicken curries or the sauteed chicken Manchurian dumplings.

"Lobster Hong Kong Style" is removed from the shell and finished with peppers and cashews: very good. Sweet-and-sour shrimp stresses the former in a sticky stir-fry. Basil-ginger shrimp vies with that shrimp Cantonese and shrimp curry for your attention. But the tastiest seafood is crisp, whole red snapper, fine in ginger or black bean sauce.

Vegetarian, noodle and rice dishes highlight a Nanking meal. Pad Thai has flair. Eggplant with hot garlic sauce gives the right heat, as do spicy curry fried rice, stir-fried chile-garlic noodles, and threadlike Singapore egg noodles with vegetables. For the record, if not the appetite, they have a respectable "American Chop Suey."

Apart from the standard ice cream, litchis and fried bananas, you may have a bakery-quality "triple chocolate mousse torte," lesser date pancakes, familiar carrot cake and "cassata or tartufo ice cream."

Sometimes, Nanking goes the extra mile.

Reviewed by Peter M. Gianotti, 10/29/06.

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