Fish Tanks, Good Feeling, Fine Food

When was the last time you had really pleasant service in a Chinatown restaurant? The last time it happened to me was on Wednesday, at Fortune, 750 N. Hill St., (213) 680-0640, a spare new Chinatown restaurant filled with fish tanks and good feeling. And, not incidentally, some really fine food.

We ordered a whole crab in garlic black bean sauce, and while we reveled in its messiness, cracking the shell and licking the sauce off our fingers, the waiters kept replacing the plates, bringing fresh steaming towels, finally, in fact, a bowl of tea so we could wash our fingers. They seemed thrilled at our obvious pleasure in the whole sauteed flounder served with its own crisply fried bones. And they grinned as we cleaned up a platter of delightfully light and crunchy fried squid with spicy salt. They even insisted that we try their dessert--tapioca in coconut milk.

The restaurant, which is owned by a former partner in Hop Li, is only a few weeks old. But the kitchen clearly knows what it is doing and the waiters are among the nicest I’ve encountered. I’ll be back.