Experience tastes from the Far East in Fells Point

Ding How, at the corner of Broadway and Aliceanna St. in Fells Point, is a Chinese restaurant with a comprehensive menu. All of the usual suspects are here, from sweet and sour chicken to moo shu pork to chow mein, Peking duck to whole crispy fish, but the restaurant absolutely excels at Szechuan flavors and noodles.

Ding How
631-37 S. Broadway
410-327-8888
Open daily for lunch and dinner
Carryout and delivery available

A whole crowd of us descended on Ding How a few weeks ago for a celebration dinner, and the management thoughtfully set us up with a table for 12 in advance. For 21 years, Henry Chen, Ronnie Shi and Ching Ling Fan have offered friendly, thoughtful service and a familiar menu of classics and exotic, innovative dishes—make sure to check the specials for those.

Start with the hot and sour soup, a spicy, heady, slightly thick brew with shredded pork, green onion and tofu. The soup is guaranteed to get your blood moving on a cold day, and the spice is refreshing on a hot day. The won ton soup is good too, a briny clear soup with a single dumpling and garnished with crisp scallion slices. There are many people devoted to the egg drop soup. You can’t go wrong.

My usual dish at Ding How is Hunan chicken, a delightful mix of chicken stir-fried with broccoli, carrots, miniature corn and bamboo sprouts, well-spiced with soy and hot peppers. It costs $5.95 for dinner, but you can get it with an egg roll and fried rice at lunch for $4.50, and I have no idea how they make money on that lunch.

This time, though, I tried scallops with garlic sauce ($10.95), lots of tender sweet scallops tossed with water chestnuts in a brown sauce spiked with chili and garlic. The dish was garnished with long crisp slices of scallion. It was delicious, and again I have no idea how they made money off that dish, since they did not stint on the scallops.

We also tried the scallops in lobster sauce, a pretty concoction of scallops and bright green zucchini slices in a traditional, slightly salty lobster sauce, and a mountainous serving of Ding How fried rice ($5.50), which is basically dark fried rice with everything you can throw into fried rice—shrimp, chicken, pork, vegetables, the works.

Lamb in the Forbidden City is thinly sliced lamb stir-fried with shreds of onion in a sweet and salty plum sauce ($9.95) and is the restaurant’s signature dish. In the spring, be sure to order the chicken and asparagus.

You can order similarly majestic servings of lo mein, long buckwheat noodles with vegetables, shrimp, beef, pork or chicken, or a combination ($5.50 small, $7.50 large). The pan-fried rice noodles with seafood and vegetables ($10.95) are delicious, as are the spicy Singapore rice noodles ($5.95/$7.95).

Ding How is a large room with a bar in the center and two dining areas. The chairs are large, comfortable and padded, and the service is quick, but you never get the impression that the management is trying to move you out the door. Unlike most Chinese restaurants, Ding How is a place where you can dine at leisure, linger over tea and enjoy the warm, friendly service.