Food & Drink

Dining review: Charlie's Bakery, where cakes and dim sum share the menu

Charlie's Bakery became a popular dim sum place by accident, or more precisely, as a matter of survival. Back in 1999 owner Charles Chou found the bakery business slow going. He added sandwiches and a Chinese noodle soup for the lunch crowd, and friends suggested that he offer additional Asian dishes.

The joint's been jumping ever since. While the restaurant still features some fine baked goods -- the fruit-topped birthday cakes are works of art -- it's the Chinese entrees and dim sum that keep customers happy.

I enjoyed eating at Charlie's until I moved away in 2001. Now I'm back and happy to see that it's still a great place to take a small child, a good friend or a visiting elder. About three dozen dishes are offered during the week, with another dozen or so specials on Saturdays.

It's no typical (or stereotypical) Asian restaurant. If not for the menu on the wall and a few Chinese-language banners here and there, you'd take it for a regular bakery with a bunch of tables and chairs.

In a big-city dim sum restaurant, servers trundle carts of delicacies through the room and let diners select what they want. At Charlie's you order at the counter and the dishes come to your table one or two at a time. They're worth the wait.

If you're really hungry, start with an order of barbecued pork puffs ($5.25, Saturdays only) because they're right by the cash register. The pastry is a cross between biscuit and croissant, tasty enough on its own to make up for the somewhat scanty amount of tangy-sweet filling.

My dining companion ordered roasted duck ($8.95), a bird I don't usually like but which turned out to be my favorite dish. The crisp-skinned quarter of a fowl was perfectly cooked: neither greasy nor dry, with a hint of soy and served with a fruity dipping sauce that tasted mostly of plum but ever so slightly of cherry.

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Crystal Dumplings ($4.25) were two- or three-bite treats of chopped shrimp encased in translucent, ultra-thin rice wrappers. Beef Shu Mai ($3.50), ping-pong-sized chunks of ground meat jacketed in thin dough, tasted hearty but a bit bland; my dining companion poured on soy and I dipped mine into that plum sauce.

Deep-fried egg rolls with peanuts ($4.95) came in light, crisp wrappers that exploded into phyllo-like fragments in the mouth. Peanuts were undetectable in the savory pork and vegetable filling, but they were delicious nonetheless.

Bok choy ($3.95) was sold out so the counter clerk offered broccoli instead. What arrived looked more like broccolini: long, thin stalks and small florets splashed with a mild, soy-based sauce. It was served very, very crisp, next-door to raw. I enjoyed it, but if you want a tender broccoli you'd better speak up.

Scallion pancake ($2.25), a saucer-sized flatbread with no discernible scallion flavor, is best used to soak up drippings from your other plates. Or to dip into the pork with pickled noodles ($9.95), a huge bowl of vinegary pork broth crammed with round noodles, pork shreds and vegetables.

The Szechuan beef noodle soup ($11.95) is another big bowl, with fall-apart-tender chunks of meat, wheat noodles and preserved vegetables in a rich beef broth. You can get it mild (suitable for kids) or truly Szechuan style. You can also expect to take half of it home for tomorrow.

Heat abounds in the spicy Szechuan chicken salad ($5.95), a nice-sized heap of shredded poultry in an oily, peppery red sauce. It's served on a bed of dry rice noodles that soaked up sauce to become soft and pliable. Delectable after the initial burn, although my companion noted that "if you don't like spicy food, don't order this."

Fortunately I'd chosen a coconut bun ($2.75) from the pastry case; the sweet-roll dough neutralized the heat the way an absorbent boom soaks up spilled oil. You can also get buns filled with red bean, custard, barbecued pork, chicken and vegetables, ham and corn and green onion.

Two Saturday visits couldn't begin to touch the more than four dozen options. We could have tried dishes like barbecued eel, taro root dumplings, tofu with vegetables, Thai curry chicken, Yu-Shang Eggplant or red hot pepper chicken.

The restaurant's high ceiling and open kitchen amplifies patron chatter and cooking clatter; on a busy Saturday it can get somewhat noisy. To me it sounds like chefs hard at work and happy clients enjoying the result, but if you want a super-quiet dining experience you might opt for takeout.

This makes Charlie's ideal for family dining, since there's no need to worry about your tots disrupting someone's harmony. Besides, servers seem genuinely happy to see babies and children.

Bring your tykes in to expand their palates. Sure, they might start out by eating just egg rolls and the steamed rice from your plate. Before you know it, though, they might want a taste of that barbecued eel.

Donna Freedman, a former Anchorage Daily News reporter and reviewer, blogs at DonnaFreedman.com.

Charlie's Bakery

Hours: 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday

Location: 2729 C St.

Contact: 677-7777

$-$$

****

Donna Freedman

Freelance writer Donna Freedman is a veteran Alaska journalist who has written for the Anchorage Daily News and many other publications. She blogs about money and midlife at DonnaFreedman.com.

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