Yip’s Chinese Restaurant

117 Columbia Turnpike, Rensselaer, 449-2030. Serving Mon-Fri 11-10:30, Sat 11:30-10:30, Sun noon-10:30. AE, D, MC, V.

Cuisine: traditional Chinese restaurant

Entrée price range: $6 (chicken chow mein) to $19 (seven stars around the moon)

Ambiance: traditional Chinese restaurant

By B.A. Nilsson

How does Jimmy Yip see his restaurant in light of the efflorescence of Chinese buffets? “We’ve become a niche,” he says. “Just by doing what we’ve always been doing, we’ve become special.” But the competition is still fierce, he says, and there’s a perennial challenge of finding good help.

Nevertheless, Yip’s Chinese Restaurant offered one of the most fun dining experiences my family and I have enjoyed in a long time. Part of it was the old-fashioned look and feel of the place; part of it the enthusiastic family spirit. Jimmy or his wife, Ling, will see to it that you’re seated comfortably, and when she stops by to take an order, deliver an item, or just see how you’re doing, you’ll get a taste of her ebullient sense of humor.

“What are you taking pictures of food for?” she chided me, catching me as I surreptitiously tried to nab a photo for this piece. “Take a picture of your family! Or I’ll take a picture of all of you!”

It’s a throwback to the Chinese restaurants of decades ago, when Cantonese fare was the mainstay and exotic Szechuan items were just beginning to invade. And those made-in-America dishes like chop suey, chow mein and General Tso’s chicken are well represented. All that’s missing are the big yellow tablecloths and the choose-from-column-B combo specials.

The restaurant is on Columbia Turnpike (aka Routes 9 and 20) in Rensselaer, not too far east of the Hudson. Easy to find, easy to park behind, and offering comfortable booth and banquette seating—or seats in the room with the bar.

We arrived early enough to have a choice of booths, but watched with some astonishment as the place filled rapidly during the course of our meal. And these weren’t adventurous-looking eaters. This was Middle America, hungry for a good old-fashioned American Meal.

Let’s see what’s offered. Appetizers include egg rolls ($2.25), spring rolls ($3), that astonishingly bad-for-you-tasting deep-fried concoction known as shrimp toast ($3) and more along those lines. Do what we did: Get an array of them in the $12.50 pu pu platter.

I love that goofy display. It’s actually Hawaiian in origin, but made its way here in the Polynesian-themed Trader Vic restaurants of the 1950s and ’60s, sporting, as is still usually the case, an American Cantonese sampling. With a blue Sterno flame cresting the top of the tall presentation platter, it makes a party out of your meal and awakens in me an unexpected longing for all that tiki stuff—rattan chairs, bamboo torches, Martin Denny—that made my rum-punch-swilling parents seem all the weirder.

Yip’s pu pu platter gives you chicken wings, barbecue spare ribs, Hawaiian skewered beef sticks, egg rolls, artery-clogging shrimp toast and more. It’s suggested for a party of two. I wouldn’t inflict it on fewer than four. We were foolish enough to accompany it with an order of steamed dumplings (eight for $6), so there was no finishing any of it. Good dumplings, too, if you like them thick-skinned.

My daughter asked me to explain chow mein and chop suey, startling me with the realization that I’ve never ordered either. I did not use this occasion to change that statistic, but you have plenty of it to choose from, featuring your favorite meat or vegetable. Egg foo young and many different noodle dishes also are offered.

Bargains abound in the entrée selections. For example: Lily ordered sweet and sour chicken, confident that the flavor would be dominated by the former. It’s a $9 dish served with a side of white rice; add a dollar and they change that rice to the pork fried variety, and throw in an egg roll and your choice of soup or juice.

The entrée itself is significantly better than the puffy Chinese buffet variety, with a more complicated (and less glow-in-the-dark) sauce; it’s still too sweet for my taste, however.

My wife veered from her usual pursuit of poultry and ordered a Buddha’s Delight ($7.25), believing that she achieves temporary moral superiority by going vegetarian for a night. It’s a generous serving clogged with tofu, which she adores and I, I might as well confess it, revile. It’s almost palatable in this context, however, with a rich sauce that brings together broccoli, mushrooms, snow peas, baby corn and bok choy.

I asked Ling to recommend something spicy and she immediately suggested Gong Bo chicken ($9; with soup and egg roll, $10), a Szechuan dish (also known as Kung Pao) that adds the appropriate peppercorns to a medley of peanuts and vegetables. Spicy? Hardly. It had a bit of a bite to it, but nothing that would disturb the aforementioned Middle America.

Jimmy Yip told me that he’s been running this restaurant for 31 years—32 in January—which means that he long ago beat the longevity odds for this mercurial business. His success has as much to do with the personality of the place as it does with a consistent, if unsurprising, cuisine, and it’s certainly the place to visit when you want a good, inexpensive, all- American (but nominally Chinese) meal.