Ye Olde Chinese Joint

It's either a law of nature or real estate: Every time a new high rise condo or rental monolith manifests itself on the Upper East Side, an additional ten restaurant delivery boys will soon be clogging neighborhood avenues.

One can hardly blame those upwardly mobile (if only to their overpriced 30th floor studios) young executives for ordering in. After spending ten or 11 hours climbing the corporate ladder, who has the energy to go out in search of a good meal? Fortunately for those young yups, there's no shortage of affordable eateries willing to deliver the goods. 

Wu Liang Ye falls in on the classy end of mid-range. (No laminated butcher block or glass-topped tables here; we're talking actual tablecloths.) The joint has already clocked ten years on East 86th Street, sandwiched between P.C. Richard and a UPS store. Those willing to get up from their Jennifer convertibles to visit Wu Liang Ye will find a comfortably modern establishment embellished with retro pagoda motifs and a mandarin red color scheme. (It's a look that made me feel nostalgic for the Chinese restaurants of my youth, the ones serving Cantonese cuisine you ate sitting on padded naugahyde bench seats.)

A bowl of Hot and Sour Soup ($1.95) always helps me set a Szechuan spice benchmark, and Wu Liang Ye (where they spell it "Sichuan") comes in on the high end of the scale, a sizzling concoction heavy on straw mushrooms with hints, rather than hunks, of pork. At too many restaurants, H&S suffers from what seems like an artificially-thickened texture, but the soup here is light without being watery. Cold noodles in sesame sauce is another reliable starter dish, usually presented as a plain plate of noodles adorned with a glop of paste that the patron is expected to mix into a saucy consistency. 

Wu Liang Ye has a different take on the appetizer. Here they're called Chilled Noodles With Spicy Sesame Vinaigrette ($4.50): dryer noodles, not quite al dente but not limp to the point of squishiness, are presented sauce free, imbued instead with a highly spiced sesame taste and color.

The main dishes avoid the generic quality of too many neighborhood Chinese restaurants. A flavorful Hunan beef (moist but not oversauced) is accompanied by red and green peppers and broccoli florets, a visually attractive combination and one that doesn't stint on the veggies. Their General Tso's ($9.95) is lightly fried, just enough to give it a crisp texture without burying it under a thick breading. My personal favorite, though, is from their $6.69 lunch special menu: the ubiquitous Baby Shrimp and Peanuts in Hot Pepper Sauce. Wu Liang Ye's version (like almost all their dishes) goes easy on the sauce. This dish hits the spice level just right, too: not wimpy, but not four-alarmer, either. Now if they would just serve a bowl of crunchy noodles with that soup. 

Wu Liang Ye 86 Restaurant

215 E. 86th St.

212-534-8899