Acton Chinese update
Tonight i decided to give the new Acton chinese place a try.
As reported before it is now run by a family that has been in the Japanese food business for 20 years now. They had/have? restaurants in Salem NH and Bedford MA.
They have got rid of most of the ice cream freezers and just retain one with about 8 flavors.
They installed a refrigerated sushi bar and will soon by doing sushi - none yet but the guy i spoke with said its his specialty.
The main menu is mostly Americanized-typical chinese takeout items with a few Japanese items on it. They have a "chinese" menu that has a couple dozen specialties on it. This menu isnt in english so i had the woman translate alot of it to me.
I ended up getting:
Hot and Sour soup - off the main menu. This was very spicy, with lots of egg in it and a few mushrooms. Not much else. Very tasty and a good thickness/consistancy. Different then any i have had, hard to explain.
Singapore rice noodles, thin rice noodles with alot of curry. Shrimp, pork veggies.
Rice cake with pork - this she translated to "stick rice" so i had thought i was ordering rice but its sliced rice noodle cake. Very tasty, my favorite of the dishes we got. I get the same dish at Dim Sum at Green Tea all the time.
Dried tofu with pork- fine sliced dried tofu with bamboo shoots and pork. Different sort of flavor. She recommended this one, saying it was very popular.
Overall the place i think has improved alot. More efficient, better flow, communications and the food is still excellent. I also think the prices are much better too. They were rather high before. All the above was $31 and the portions are all huge. Looking forward to trying more of the Chinese menu.
By hargau
on Mar 27, 2008 03:41 PM
View »
Is this the place bt the train station that has gotten good press here before? Or another new place.
Permalink | Reply
Yes this is the actoncoffee.com place which is the blue house by the train station. But this used to be run by the owner of the building who had never run a restaurant and had hired a guy to cook. That is no longer. It is now run by people who are pros. So other then the location and the building owner, i dont think anything is the same
Permalink | Reply
Thanks for the update, hargau. Sounds pretty promising, and maybe more amenable to eating in. The old set-up wasn't too comfy.
I'm pretty sure you said in an old post that their new name is Beijing-Tokyo. Is that the case?
Permalink | Reply
The setup is the same as far as eating space. The name is Peking-Tokyo
http://www.actoncoffee.com/eatery_men...
Permalink | Reply
Sounds like I'll stick to take-out. I'll check it out soon, maybe give them a couple more weeks to get settled. Looks like they have a couple of veggie options for the one non-meat eater among us, so we all can be happy.
Permalink | Reply
They also have veggie options on the "chinese" menu and can make anything you want. Today she had a huge bag of fresh baby bok choy.
Permalink | Reply
I was in Concord for work this morning and stopped by to get their Lion's Head meatballs for lunch. The sauce on the meatballs was well done, much like I remember it during my childhood in Shanghai. However, the additional sauce in the container was too thin by the time I got home and ate it though the sauce could have easily broken in the 20 or so minutes it took me. The meatballs themselves had an excellent porky flavor but the addition of bits of water chestnut and tofu curd slices detracted from the texture while not adding to the flavor at all.
Permalink | Reply
ooooh i didnt know they had those! Will have to try them.
I LIKE when they put bits of water chestnut inside.
Permalink | Reply
We went again tonight. They now have the sushi menu and the chinese menu up on their own website http://www.pekingtokyoasianrestaurant...
Click on the row of 5 squares for the chinese menu. Im having a friend translate it for me tomorrow.
Tonight we got:
singapore noodles - (again, my gf loves them).. Tonights was a bit different as it didnt have shrimp in it. Instead had bbq pork, beef and chicken.
Lion Head meatball - I liked these. very good flavor. I didnt detect much if any waterchestnut as avial had. Ours seemed like all meat served over a bit of cabbage. Also ours didnt have any sauce on the side, but alot of sauce in the tin with them. Im wondering if they read Avial's comments and made changes? (they did mention they saw this thread here
)Some sort of noodle soup - i wish i knew what this one was called (was only in chinese). It was a tasty broth with clear thin noodles, cabbage and pork dumplings made with eggs for the wrappers instead of noodles. I have not had dumplings like this anywhere before.
Permalink | Reply
Thanks for the update. I would LOVE to see that translated menu. I'm going to try them tonight.
Permalink | Reply
Any recent info on this place? Is it still there? I'll be in Acton today, so I was thinking of swinging by, but couldn't find anything more recent than this thread....
Thanks,
gg
Permalink | Reply
It was there two weeks ago. I haven't eaten there since about... hmmmm.... maybe May. It felt less adventurous than before the management change, but the food we got was very good. My sister ordered a simple eggplant dish and we tried the S&P calamari [which looked odd and was delicious.]
[Edit: and we got a soup that was not brilliant but somehow very soothing.]
Permalink | Reply
Have not been since around April/May.. When we did go we ordered off the chinese menu which has the more authentic dishes.
Permalink | Reply
Sorry, I let the team down, and couldn't get there early enough to have lunch...:(
Permalink | Reply
You might want to call first to make sure they are still in business - tried to check out their site yesterday and the link was dead.
Permalink | Reply
Yea its dead today too yet their old site is still up here, so i wonder.. http://actoncoffee.com/eatery_menu.pdf
Permalink | Reply