Dining Out: Authentic Chinese recipes not often seen

Having a family friend who is an expert chef with 30 years of experience made the decision easy for Aixiang Zheng and Junqiang Chen; they would open a restaurant offering the best authentic traditional Chinese and other Asian dishes.

The couple brought their family to Doylestown after falling in love with Bucks County, and opened Kung Fu Restaurant there last November. Chef Gang Le developed the menu, which features many familiar Chinese dishes as well as authentic dishes not found elsewhere in the area.

Gang’s steamed soup dumplings have quickly become a local favorite. The handmade dumplings are steamed in and filled with the chef’s own bone broth and served hot in their bamboo steamer. The list of chef’s specials includes roast duck with lotus leaf steamed buns, crispy pork in sweet and sour sauce, Peking roast duck, fried shrimp balls and stir-fried seafood with Xo sauce.

Vegetarians will find plenty to choose from on the menu, which includes griddle-cooled organic cauliflower with dry red pepper, Kung Pao tofu, mapo tofu and wood ear mushrooms with wild yams and vegetables.

There also is a tofu option among the popular ramen dishes. Zheng mastered the art of making ramen, a Cantonese wheat noodle slow-cooked in bone broth with vegetables, then topped with a variety of protein options. Those include shrimp, chicken, pork belly and beef short ribs. Kung Fu has Doylestown’s only ramen menu.

A lunch menu of Chinese dishes has proven very popular with familiar dishes such as General Tso’s chicken, sesame chicken, Kung Pao chicken, mapo tofu, pepper shrimp and beef with broccoli.

Many of the restaurant’s dishes call for hot Chinese peppers, but the staff will adjust the amount of heat according to the preference of the diner, Zheng said.

Kung Fu Restaurant also attracts a large amount of pickup and delivery orders, although Zheng says she prefers when customers can dine in the handsomely redecorated restaurant because the food always tastes best when you can eat it immediately after it is prepared.

The restaurant takes its name from Kung Fu, the wildly popular Chinese martial arts designed to improve the body and the mind. During the month of July the restaurant is featuring weekly specials.