Yen Ching – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Have a yen for Chinese or Korean cuisine? Can your appetite be sated only by the nasal-clearing, smoldering heat of Szechwan style cooking? Are the cravings that consume you affixed on succulent sushi and eye-watering wasabi. If all four of these options sound good but you can’t make up your mind, there’s only one dining destination that–under one roof–can satisfy your appetite for all these palate-pleasing Asian cuisines. Yen Ching, a popular Northeast Heights restaurant named for a city in Northern China, specializes in Chinese, Korean and Szechwan cuisine and has an all-you-can-eat (AYCE) Japanese sushi bar to boot. Yen…

Cathay House – Las Vegas, Nevada (CLOSED)

There are two things I rail against which might classify some of my restaurant reviews as a bully pulpit. One is the incursion of chain restaurants, a pitiable parade of mediocrity that has largely resulted in the homogenization and “dumbing down” of the American palate. The other is the lack of authenticity in so-called ethnic restaurants, a lacking that often goes hand-in-hand with the culinary chaining of America’s restaurants. In my reviews of New Mexican food restaurants, I refer to this phenomenon as the “anglosizing” of New Mexican food (the Taco Bell phenomenon). In Chinese restaurants, this “Americanization” phenomenon manifests…