This weekend my girlfriend was visiting town from NYC. She is originally from Dongbei (moved to Shanghai while a teenager, went to college in Beijing, and then came to the US about 3 years ago) and awhile ago I had mentioned that Chicago had a handful of Dongbei restaurants not far from Chinatown. I had suggested Homestyle Taste to her as I had heard it's very good. When we pulled up, she kind of laughed because the Chinese name for the restaurant is actually "Shenyang Restaurant." Shenyang is the capital and largest city in Liaoning if you didn't know, and also where her father is from.
The inside is of course a kind of no frills Chinese place. She had remarked to me about half way through the meal that she felt as if she were in China - not only because most of the people there were Chinese, speaking Chinese, but also the decor of the place was very much like what you'd find in China down to these fake peppers hanging on the walls.
We ordered too much food for two people because of course - our eyes are always bigger than our heads. We ordered the "sliced potato salad" (tu dou si), lamb skewers, "pan fried smoked pork cake", sour cabbage/pork dumpling, Stewed Pork & Clear Noodle in Brown Sauce, and "Stir-Fried Pork w.Dry Bean Curd & Jalapeno " appetizer.
I burned my tongue a little bit on the pork/pepper appetizer right away but was able to eventually recover during the meal for the most part. This appetizer tasted pretty good, though according to my girlfriend was the least authentic and least good thing we ate - because they used too much garlic and not enough hot peppers. The tu dou si was also pretty good, though because of my burned tongue, I could not taste the acid components as much. Still decent though.
I think the real stars though were everything else we tried. To start with, the lamb skewers were good and had great balance of cumin with the lamb. We've had other places in both Chicago and NYC that were under or over seasoned but these were close to perfectly balanced. My girlfriend thought they were very good and authentic, and remarked more than once that they were very good.
The "pan fried smoked pork cake" is a menu item that, according to my girlfriend, is really hard to find in the US anywhere and is very authentic. She has yet to find it on any menu in NYC (we only had it from a non Dongbei place at an international food festival last summer in Queens) but it's on the menu at Homestyle Taste. Although she said the pancake part of it was a tad bit too thick and the pork was sliced too thick, we both agreed the taste was very good and according to her.. comparable to what you might find in China on that front. The sauce in it is very similar to sauces you'd find in Beijing. Anybody who is a fan of BBQ pork and Chinese food, as well as Peking Duck sauce should get this.
We also both agreed the dumplings were good. I am used to the same type of dumplings at Qing Xiang Yuan Dumpling (which my girlfriend also thinks are very good and very authentic and comparable to some places in China). These ones didn't have the "soup" in them but the flavor was still good. My girlfriend thought they were also good and tasted like something her mom might make at home.
The main dish we had was the Stewed Pork & Clear Noodle in Brown Sauce. This comes in an iron pot right to the table that makes it look like you were at someone's home and they made it for you. Literally on top of this they serve corn bread, which is again very authentic. There is a type of wok this is normally cooked in while there are spots on the rim of the walk to cook the corn bread at the same time. Anyway, the pork was super tender and really good. It was so tender that the skin on the outside made my tired self think for a minute I was eating a mushroom. The sauce was great and the noodles too. The serving size was big so we only finished half of it. My girlfriend thought this was probably the best thing we ate, as did I.
All in all we had a great meal and left very full. My girlfriend was pretty happy too. NYC has a few Dongbei places too (Chicago might have just as many as NYC all in all - Qing Xiang Yuan Dumpling is also Dongbei, and there's a place in the Richland Center food court that is too outside of the places in Bridgeport) - but when I asked my girlfriend to compare Homestyle Taste to the Dongbei places she's had in NYC, she told me Homestyle Taste is more authentic than any she's had in NYC and better tasting. In fact, good enough that when her parents visit Chicago for the first time in a month, she wants to take them to Homestyle Taste. I found it weird, but she told me that even in Shanghai where her parents live, it is not easy to get great Dongbei style food. According to her, Homestyle Taste was comparable to a new, good Dongbei restaurant that recently opened near her parents' condo in Shanghai.
I can't speak for the other non-Dongbei food there, but what we had was pretty solid and we'd both recommend it for anyone who wants a taste of authentic NE Chinese food, which according to her is mostly on the first 2 pages of the menu, some of the 3rd page, and randomly things here and there on the rest of the menu.