Boston Memory: Dining at Bi Fong Tang
August 24th, 2006 | by Loretta |After spending most of the day exploring the Museum of Science in Boston, dinner was something to look forward to. Last Saturday, my family and my uncle’s went to a Chinese restaurant for some traditional communal dining. What better way to have a great meal together before leaving?
Communal dining is pretty typical in Chinese restaurants. At dinner, it typically includes ordering from sets of prix fixe menus. These sets often vary in the number of courses (maybe 8 to 10 different dishes per set) and to what extent are the ingredients attainable– obviously, some foods cost more than others to buy. Of course, this also means there is a price different.
It’s called ho chai (Canto: wo choi; ho in Mandarin is pronounced like huh) and the courses usually come in some general order at any Chinese restaurant in which this is ordered.
We start off with soup, ladled into ceramic bowls by the waiter. This is my favorite part as a kid, because some waiters could do it speedily without any mess, while others drip between each bowl.
This was a soup thickened with cornstarch. 
But anyway, it was a mixed seafood soup, consisting of goodies like shredded crab, shrimp, green onions and fish stomachs that were once dried. There is usually a small dish of red wine vinegar to go with it. Normally, I don’t add any to my soup, but I decided to give it a go and drizzled a little over the top.
We had stir-fried clams.
They were rather plump and covered in a savory black bean sauce. I was tempted to explain to my little cousin Ben what the adductor muscles, siphon and foot all do since it was just so clear. It was hard to look at the clam and not think of the many specimens I studied for a bio lab practical a few months ago. So I only had one or two…
Next came a kid-favorite: Peking pork.
I’m actually not that sure of the name in English. It’s a lot like the chops I had with Angela and Robert at the beginning of the week. They’re very tender pork chops that were deep fried and then covered in a very tangy, sweet burgandy-colored sauce. As my uncle pointed out, they were so good that my other little cousin, Jessica, was eating them willingly. 
Pretty much whenever we dine out as a family for dinner, this is on the table.
Another dish on the table was stir-fried slices of conch with a mix of vegetables.
This is a tricky dish to make, because if the conch is cooked too long, it’s tough to eat. This was stir-fried in a mild sauce with carrots, baby corn, broccoli and mushrooms.
Continuing our seafood trend, there was lobster.
This was a simple lobster dish stir fried with some salt, ginger and green onions. A slurry of starch was added to make a sauce to go with it.
We also had some veggies presented in a dish topped with a crabmeat-based sauce that had the consistency of a soup, though a little thicker. There was also egg in this sauce, added towards the end like in egg drop soup, so that the egg would not be overcooked.
I haven’t a clue what kind of vegetables these were, but they were soft like watercress, but a lot heartier.
There was a dish of beef stir-fried with pickled mustard greens. This was a surprisingly sweet dish and the pickled greens added a good crunch, contrasting the tender meat.
I think there were other vegetables in it without any pickling, like carrot and napa cabbage, to even out the saltiness from the mustard greens.
We also had steamed fish. Chinese people really do eat fish with the bones in them and the heads on.
This was prepared by steaming and they usually use whatever fish that’s fresh and cheap in the market. Or sometimes they pull one out from their tanks, but not usually. Anyway, it’s steamed and towards the end, a combination of soy sauce, oil and shredded green onion is added to it. Sometimes there’s shredded ginger as well.
About midway, they brought us fried rice. We had the option of choosing fried rice or noodles.
This had peas, egg, Chinese sausage and baby shrimp. And oil.
To end the eight entrees (rice is considered a staple, so it’s not really counted) we got our bill. And much to my delight, they served us complementary red bean soup. It’s basically red beans boiled and cooked until they create a sandy, liquidy goodness. Then it is seasoned with cane sugar and sometimes dried tangerine peels.
This dinner for eight cost about $160 after tax and gratuity. And it was fun sitting together, enjoying the food and the company. I particularly enjoyed the fact that Ben would occasionally say to me, Loretta, you didn’t take a picture of this yet! What a cutie.
Bi Fong Tang is located in Boston’s Chinatown at 46 Beach Street. It’s actually in the basement of tall building. Fortunately, to save everyone from my bad pinyin, I took a picture of the ad since we saw it after dinner.
