We belatedly continue our backwards journey through Chicago cuisine with Sunday evening's trip to Chinatown, and Joy Yee's Noodle Shop.

I'd had Joy Yee's scoped out a week before the trip. I knew that while our plans were flexible, that one mealtime and surrounding hours in Chinatown were going to happen. And since Chinatown is a nicely defined neighborhood in Urbanspoon, it was easy to poke through, research the various establishments, and make a decision.

But before I get to the restaurant, a brief prelude. Before dinner, we were dodging rain and doing some shopping, and I was enticed by a small restaurant/takeout place with char siu pork hanging in the window. You know I'm a sucker for that stuff, and since there was a fridge in the hotel, I figured I could get away with taking some home with me. That pork joined some CSA aromatics in a lovely fried rice the following Tuesday.

So anyway, Joy Yee Noodle Shop is a bit completely fucking insane. It's large, with five or six rows of narrowly-spaced cafeteria tables, and a giant spiral-bound menu that features both lists and photos of what had to be 600 or more different dishes. Somehow, even so, the vegetarian options were more limited than you'd expect.

What you see in the picture is what I ended up with - a Thai basil baked rice. Rice, chicken, scallops, and squid in a Thai basil sauce and then baked in this bamboo tube so that the rice ends up being flavored by the bamboo. It was fabulous, but even though I said "yes" when I asked if I wanted it spicy, it wasn't even close to spicy.

That was actually a bit of a recurring theme - an appetizer of "spicy" Korean fried vegetable dumplings also had no heat at all. They were pretty good - incredibly crunchy on the outside, but a bit bland and slightly astringent on the inside. We also tried cream-cheese wonton with spinach, which is a surprisingly good idea. Cathy had a duck noodle soup that was epic in size and very nicely flavored, and Liz had a mushroom and tofu dish that was very mild in flavor, but not excessively bland.

Would I go back there if I found myself in Chinatown again? Probably not. It's not a slight on the place, but while there were tons of things on the menu I didn't get to try, the place was hectic and crowded enough, and the food enough of a crap shoot, that I think my wanderlust would get the better of me. Plus they have a sister restaurant that just does sushi and shabu shabu that I'd be hellaciously tempted to go into.

If I were a local? I'd probably try and find some off-peak times to go and explore the menu a bit further. And maybe get one of those bamboo rice bakes again.