Ma-Po Tofu @ Ming's
Ming's has been open only a couple of years in a converted West End house near the Marina. Most of the menu is from the local Chinese catalog of the late 1980s, around the time when fans of Asian cuisine started going to Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese places. That left Chinese restaurants with customers who never order anything other than egg rolls, fried rice and Mandarin chicken.
That said, I can't complain about the goodness of Ming's eats. Now and then they reach for something offbeat. Ma-Po tofu is found in many Chinese menus, but most customers for it are Asians. The dish is named for an old woman from the Szechuan province known as Pock-Marked Ma, whose few teeth required her to eat only soft foods. This dish fits the bill: ground pork, a light sauce, and cubes of the namesake tofu. The flakes of red pepper--enough to make this a decidedly peppery dish--makes the tofu cubes look like dice.
Whenever I see Ma-Po tofu in a Chinese restaurant that has even a chance of being good, I order it. I've never had a bad one. It's a spicy dish, with a red-brown sauce of very large flavors. It is impossible for eat this with chopsticks (unless, I guess, you have been doing so all your life). The bathtub-shaped bowl in which Ming's service gives us enough for at least two people. Even the last spoonful is tasty.
Ming's. West End: 7224 Pontchartrain Blvd. 504-333-6341.
This is among the 500 best dishes in New Orleans area restaurants. Click here for a list of the other 499.
[divider type=""]
That said, I can't complain about the goodness of Ming's eats. Now and then they reach for something offbeat. Ma-Po tofu is found in many Chinese menus, but most customers for it are Asians. The dish is named for an old woman from the Szechuan province known as Pock-Marked Ma, whose few teeth required her to eat only soft foods. This dish fits the bill: ground pork, a light sauce, and cubes of the namesake tofu. The flakes of red pepper--enough to make this a decidedly peppery dish--makes the tofu cubes look like dice.
Whenever I see Ma-Po tofu in a Chinese restaurant that has even a chance of being good, I order it. I've never had a bad one. It's a spicy dish, with a red-brown sauce of very large flavors. It is impossible for eat this with chopsticks (unless, I guess, you have been doing so all your life). The bathtub-shaped bowl in which Ming's service gives us enough for at least two people. Even the last spoonful is tasty.
