Dragon Restaurant

Although Dragon's owners are from Canton, the food is overwhelmingly Chinese-American, which means it isn't any more genuinely Chinese than Italian-American food is genuinely Italian; both are cuisines of adaptation. But nonauthentic isn't a synonym for bad. Both of these immigrant-invented genres can be very tasty when prepared well, as Dragon's dishes are. Especially good here is pork - huge succulent ribs, juicy barbeque pork, or any dish containing either of the above (like pork-packed house-special fried rice, which also features generous amounts of shrimp, tofu chunks, scallions, and fresh bean sprouts). Peking duck is not the crisp-skinned, nearly fat-free, labor-intensive real thing, but it's darn good regular Cantonese roast duck. The crunch in the chop suey here comes from snow peas and bok choy, not the usual overload of American celery. And sauces are, uniformly, only lightly cornstarch-thickened rather than the mucilagelike mess typifying bad Chinese-American food. Best: Your order will fill your car with the essence of Chinese take-out in a way that authentic Chinese food somehow never does.