Restaurant Review - Frank’s your daddy

Frank Ma’s Gourmet surprises with superb Chinese fare and funky fun ambience

By Cynthia Wong“The Chinese will be the only people to survive a great famine,” says my Burmese-born-and-raised mom to me over the phone. “They make an art of eating the weirdest things. Amazing what they can do with a fish’s stomach.”

I’ve actually called to ask my Chinese doctor dad for an anatomical explanation of tendons. A year ago, I feasted on a beef tendon stew with my pops at Little Szechuan and I’ve since been haunted by the rich, velvety meat.

Seizing on the opportunity to savor more of the same, I ordered the hot braised beef tendon at Frank Ma’s. What came was a cold, slithery mass of clear, noodlelike slices stained neon-orange with chili oil. I was utterly confused. My dad explains the catch: A tendon dish listed in a menu’s pork/beef section is a braised dish like the one I had at Little Szechuan, featuring meat connected to the tendons. What I unwittingly ordered from the cold plate section at Frank Ma’s is the connective tissue itself.

Beef tendons prepared both ways are just some of the many exotic delights at Frank Ma’s, where the decor is as surprising as the cuisine. Tucked into a corner of Chamblee’s Chinatown Mall, the restaurant’s bland exterior makes it indistinguishable from any other Chinese restaurant.

The similarities stop there. Interior walls recall tea rooms, with Kelly green paint and dainty white chair rails. But above the main seating area hangs a light fixture that is pure Miss Hong Kong beauty pageant - a giant, many-tiered, mirrored mosaic from which hangs an equally glittery chandelier and a pair of mini-mace disco lights. Cast your eyes downward and you’ll see the floor is a checkerboard of blinking, glowing lights. You might not want to bring your ADD-afflicted friends.

The menu also combines the commonplace and exotic. Usual suspects, such as superlative versions of General Tso’s chicken and Mongolian beef are here, but what makes Frank Ma’s such a gem are regional specialties that you’ll not find elsewhere in Atlanta - at least not printed on the menu in English.

Dishes arrive two breaths and a heartbeat after you order them, in machine-gun rapid succession. Having eaten 20 dishes on three separate visits, I can say that few techniques or preparations are beyond the kitchen’s grasp. To any Asian cuisine lover, the food is sublime. To the child of an exceptional Chinese cook, each bite is nostalgic magic, an insistent tug at the soul.

The price for such culinary pleasure is remarkably small. Gathering friends for an impromptu banquet is both the best and thriftiest way to work through the expansive menu. A spread of 13 dishes shared among seven people rang in at $23 a head, including a generous tip.

Pancakes and dumplings from the northern Chinese tradition kick off the feast perfectly. Pan-fried onion pancakes are coiled into delicate, flaky layers. Dumpling wrappers are made in-house, providing the juicy pork dumplings and pot stickers with satisfying chew and heft. The Shanghai rice cake with fatty pork is a bun whose feathery layers have been smeared with toasted, ground sesame seeds that create an intense, almost musty earthiness against the salty, meaty filling. Adventurous diners have much to try, including those hot braised beef tendons, which aren’t hot or beefy. Slippery and glasslike, and dressed with chili-spiked sesame oil, the tendons have the toothy bite of undercooked pasta and the pleasant rubbery texture of jellyfish. The enticingly titled “garlic spiced bacon meat” consists of cold, thin scallops of poached pork dressed with a pungent, engaging combination of chili, soy, sesame oil and fried bits of garlic. Aunt Song’s fish soup combines a lightly thickened, crystal-clear seafood stock with ethereal slips of tilapia and ghostly leaves of bok choy.

The pork and beef section of the menu is the lengthiest and most intriguing. A dish labeled “slowly cooked bacon” is an earthy marvel: Stir-fried Chinese mustard greens, pickled bamboo shoots and bits of fatty pork are mounded on a plate and covered with braised slabs of thick bacon. Pork with bean curd knots is a real plate-licker, uniting chunks of pork with tofu dried into sheets and tied into elegant knots. The pan drippings and a hit of oyster sauce create a thick, sticky brown reduction - a demi-glace of sorts, cradled by the ridges and folds of the tender, chewy tofu knots. Long beans seared in a hot wok with garlic, soy and porcine nubs are nutty, crisp and tender all at once.

Seafood is so fresh, you’d think the fish here had its last sip of seawater as you walked in the door. The steamed sea bass is buttery custard sweetness that falls apart at the approach to your plate. The kitchen dresses it with ginger, garlic, scallions and a drizzle of soy. Sliced fish and hot oil is a punch-bowl sized tureen of the thinnest, sweetest slices of tilapia, so delicate they slip from my chopsticks, and so tender they nearly break as soon as they touch my tongue, poached with bok choy in a generous amount of chili oil.

There’s much to love about Frank Ma’s, from the disco get-down interior to the brisk, efficient service that warms up to you with each visit. Yet the best thing may be the seemingly endless, tantalizing menu. I’ll go back in the springtime for the stir-fried pea sprouts. I’ll revisit for a taste of braised chestnut chicken. And when I’ve savored everything on the menu in English, I’ll eat my way through the 14 items listed only in Chinese characters. I’d like to believe some things served here are just too good for words.

cynthia.wong@creativeloafing.com