Visit to LTH - where did we go wrong?

I was so excited to finally visit Little Three Happiness last Friday night with husband and brother, but, unfotunately, we left a little disappointed. I'm determined to try again - maybe it had to do with the time of day, 10pm, or what we ordered??:

I had the thin, pan fried noodle with shrimp. The shrimp was very good, but the seafood-type sauce (what is the name of this sauce?) just smothered the entire dish so that half the noodles and vegetables were mushy. I ate all the shrimp and was left with a huge mound of noodles.

My husband had beef with chinese brocoli, and the beef was fatty, and stringy, and the entire dish was fairly tasteless. He couldn't even finish it.

My brother's dish - salt and pepper chicken - was the best. Very tasty, tender chicken and wide, flat noodles.

I want to believe that our experience was just a fluke. Can someone recommend a menu for our return visit? (After searching today, I've seen a lot about the salt and pepper shrimp.)

Hi,

One sure fire method is simply invite G Wiv along. LTH is his baby with a typical menu here.

Regards,

Thanks, Cathy2 - I missed these pictures when doing my search.

I too was there on Friday night, 9:30ish and didn't have too much of a memorable meal. Didn't order any of the GWiv pictured dishes.
We tried
1) deep fried squid. Very greasy. I was thinking of squid fries (like at Shui Wah which is great). This was a ok.
2) the beef with bitter melon: tender, tasty beef, but rather a lot of the bitter melon which could have been cut a bit smaller.
3) the snails in black bean sauce. This was good. A little bit of sand, but I don't have a problem with that considering the dish.
4) Chinese broccolli

I did ask for salt and pepper seafood combo (scallop, squid, shrimp) but was told it wasn't offered.

Overall I was a bit underwhelmed; maybe it was the high expectations going in. Maybe we'll try again but considering the large number of other places yet to be sampled it may not be soon.
I was comparing the food (qualitywise, not cuisinewise of course) to the fare I'm used to at Lao Sze Chuan. I've been eating there for four years and I've always been happy with all the dishes we've received - some of which have not neccessarily been on the menu but were slight extrapolations or modifications.

-edited in-
Curiously, the Zagat survey writeup they have on their wall mentions LTH serves szechuan food also. I don't care for Zagat reviews, but is the reason for having it on the wall, essentially obligatory?

On the other hand, I adore Happy Chef (and some do not hold IT in the same esteem). Ya never know...

http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.ph ... happy+chef

Rob

The topic of "why didn't I love my dinner at LTH" has come up a few times before. I think that by virtue of having been "named after" this restaurant, LTHForum holds this restaurant up to a pretty high standard.

It is important to consider Mike G's post on the topic of the name of the board:

Mike G wrote:LTH stands for "Little" Three Happiness, a Chinatown storefront which one of the site's founders thinks is the best restaurant in Chicago. Others happen to disagree, but the point of the name isn't to honor one restaurant--it's to pay tribute to the little happinesses waiting to be discovered in restaurants all over the city, and to honor the spirit that seeks to share them with strangers online

Mike makes an excellent point that cannot be put better. The lesson to take away is: Some people love LTH, some like it, some don't like it. You may fall in any of these three camps.

Here are a couple links to previous, sometimes heated, discussions about dining at LTH. I hope you find something that makes you want to go back. (Personally, I love it there)

Post-paddling Prawns: Dim Sum at LTH

Little Three Happiness--I don't get the noodles

my last abominable meal @ LTH

Best,
Michael / EC

Perhaps someone might be so kind as to explain the recent preponderance of requests/reviews concerning late night dining in Chinatown; is exceptional quality really to be expected outside of prime hours? Rather, is Chinatown considered by many an "end up" not a destination?

^^

I (as the OP of 'my last abominable meal @ LTH' thread), hv personally "given up" Chinatown as a source of post-clubbin grub.

Korean places like San Soo Gab San, 24 hour Korean restaurant, F.D.L.T. even the tres chic kiddie Korean bar Crush, offers better food than Chinatown for my Asian desires.

K-town > C-town for late nite grub because, IMO, Koreans drink more and party much harder than the Chinese in this town.

Sorry to hear about your less than stellar experience at LTH. I, for one, have always been satisfied with my food there (there are other Chinese places I like more, eg, Ed's, Hon Kee, or Lao Szechuan) but, then again, I tend to order more or less the same thing every time: beef with Chinese broccoli served over crisp rice noodles. I've never found the beef to be stringy or tough, the gai-lan is always plentiful, fresh, bright green and just this side of tender (all the better that it's a little underdone, as it makes re-heating the next day not kill it) and the noodles crispy around the rim of the plate and yielding (but still firm) in the spots where it has had a chance to mix with the tasty, gingery sauce. I get a craving for this dish about 3-5 times a month, always betwen 10pm and 3 am (lucky me), and it's always the same, ie, good. The other dishes I've sampled over the years from LTH have been as mundane as shrimp fried rice and exotic as beef tripe in garlic and chicken feet in spicy sauce. None of the food has ever been below my expectations (which, in the case of the tripe and chicken feet, were prettty low to being with, and, true to form, I still didn't like them. More my fault than the chef's, though.) No, what pissed me off the last 2 times I went to LTH was the smoking policy, which seems to be applied at the owner's whim. I can understand a smallish restaurant not wanting (or not being able to provide) a separate smoking area, but, frankly, I wanna light up after I put away a goodly portion of my noodles, and there are no signs in the place indicating that I shouldn't. The last 2 times, though, I was informed that there is no smoking, even though I was the only diner in the place (save someone waiting for take-out) and, more to the point, that this IS A DIVE IN F*&&%^& CHINATOWN!!!! Part of the reason I go to LTH is for this reason (the fact that it brings me back to the beloved dives of the NYC Chinatown of my youth, in which one would often see the cook - the COOK! smoking as he chopped greens or butchered a chicken) and, frankly, I'm gonna try one more time before I find somewhere else to have my late night noodles. Jesus, no smoking in Chinatown?? What's next, no taking out the Racing Form and doing the handicapping for next day's action, or no clandestine drug deals in between egg rolls?? Utter bullshit, this is, which must be remedied with all due haste. Coughing,

Rebbe

Amusing, never-the-less.

Ramon wrote:Was this an edit, a castration, an amputation, or an abomination? Amusing, never-the-less.

Ramon,

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Thank you, nonetheless - I do try to amuse, though some may find my efforts less than such. Grassy-ass.

Rebbe

If the Rebbe were merely a fictional creation of the disreputable lesser-known brother of Damon Runyon, I would be happy. To know, or at least believe, that he lives and breathes (or wheezes), clutching a racing form and a filterless Pall Mall in dives in F!@#$@$%^$%^*ing Chinatown is even more fun. Thanks for the posts. We are amused.

[quote="TonyC"]^^

I (as the OP of 'my last abominable meal @ LTH' thread), hv personally "given up" Chinatown as a source of post-clubbin grub.

Korean places like San Soo Gab San, 24 hour Korean restaurant, F.D.L.T. even the tres chic kiddie Korean bar Crush, offers better food than Chinatown for my Asian desires.

K-town > C-town for late nite grub because, IMO, Koreans drink more and party much harder than the Chinese in this town.[/quote]

F.D.L.T. is closed.

Paul Tyksins wrote:F.D.L.T. is closed.

NO!!!! that was the closest thing Chi-town had to an LA-style Korean restaurant

Paul Tyksins wrote:F.D.L.T. is closed.

Say it ain't so, Joe!