Twenty-five years ago, back when most Northern-style Chinese cooking was still being prepared by Cantonese guys who couldn’t have found Tianjin on a map, the original Mandarin Deli was a revelation, a Chinatown dive that introduced Los Angeles to the wonders of chile-soaked tripe and soup dumplings, hacked chicken and hand-cut sesame noodles, pressed tofu and garlicky seaweed salad. The pot stickers were especially good — long, crisp things that came nestled together like baby puppies, bursting with the flavors of pork and hot oil. There are probably 200 restaurants in Los Angeles County now that subscribe to this formula for Shandong-style snack food by way of Taipei, but Mandarin Deli was the first, and one of the most influential Chinese restaurants in the canon of Los... More >>>