On the other hand, it’s doubtless unfair to other places we review to come to one that’s already a longtime favorite. Most of the time we’re casting a die when we order, and it’s a one-shot win-or-lose proposition for the restaurant we’re subjecting to this public evaluation. In Rainbow’s case I know the menu almost too well, and the dishes we chose were known-and-loved quantities. We did our meal family style, sharing an appetizer and two entrees—I had to nix B’s initial plan of getting a soup for himself, something about a diet … so unreviewerlike.

We started with tofu with cilantro salad. Most people wouldn’t call this dish a salad if they saw it—it comes in a bowl with a "recursive" cube of tofu (a large cube of tofu composed of small subcubes) sitting in a light sesame/soy sauce. Sprinkled liberally atop is cilantro, and chilies and sesame seeds are also thrown in for good measure. It’s an addictive dish—someday we’ll create a list of our favorite dishes in the Twin Cities and this will be on mine. The diced tofu is perfectly firm yet silky. The cilantro is chopped up too, whole sprigs at a time; the stems left in for their subtle crunch.

B’s only stipulation about our entrees was that they not have beef in them (he’s been skittish about beef since the isolated BSE case recently … as for me, well I had an excellent hamburger at Sample Room the following day). But no matter, things worked out despite the constraint. We ordered the Chinese eggplant with garlic sauce and the duck with pickled mustard greens. The eggplant was wonderfully flavored and cooked to just the right point of pliancy—I am not a fan of undercooked eggplant. The dish also includes sliced onions and bell peppers and these were nicely al dente. The ginger-garlic sauce is on the sweet side and a tad greasy—once you’ve eaten most of the dish you notice all the oil that’s left behind—but that eggplant makes it easy to overlook these quibbles.

The success story continued. . . . The slices of duck breast were excellent—moist and tender and with a thin layer of skin along one edge. The sweetness of the sauce was complemented by the tang of the pickled greens, which were mostly stems. This dish too had ingredients that had been thoughtfully selected to provide variation in textural consistency: crisp pea pods and yielding-to-the-teeth tree mushrooms.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad meal at Rainbow. It gets a rap in some circles for not being completely authentic, but then it’s not trying to be, and it excels in its chosen mission. In a comfortable, unpretentious way it might even be labeled elegant. You can get exotic martinis and there’s a small wine list with inexpensive and well-chosen selections. Bass Ale and Summit are on tap.

Rainbow also offers lunch specials on weekdays. It’s a short list, headed by three soups, vegetable, hot-and-sour, and chicken-corn. I had my fill of chicken corn soup as a child growing up in Pakistan, where virtually every non-desi meal out, not that there were that many of them, was at a Chinese restaurant and started with large bowls of it—at that time its thick, viscous base and oversalted but otherwise spiceless flavor was a novelty, one that’s long since worn off. The rest of the lunch specials are equally standard fare: shrimp with broccoli, beef with green beans, mixed vegetables in black bean sauce, chicken lomein, and cashew chicken.

Another special menu is available these days at Rainbow, but only for dinner. It’s their annual limited-availability Chinese New Year menu (only offered for a couple of weeks or so every lunar year). This Year of the Monkey version features small plates so you can sample more stuff, but hurry in because it disappears soon. I’ve had it once and will probably get to it again.

We had a terrible experience last week and when discussing venues for The Lunch this week my one stipulation was that it had to be good. Rainbow is one of our old reliable places, which is almost never a miss, and so this week The Lunch went for—what to it is—comfort food.

They serve a pretty mean martini here not that we would (or could) partake of any at lunch. What I did partake in was a cold glass of Bonny Doon Pacific Rim Riesling that I found sweet and crisp, perhaps an adult version of alka-pop! Don’t let this put you off because there is a pretty decent wine & beer selection. We were seated next to a fish tank in which swam what I thought were enormous Goldfish. The restaurant is situated in the bottom half of an old building and offers the sheer luxury of off-street parking for its patrons. No serious attempt is made at a Chinese décor and if one weren’t careful one would soon forget that this is a Chinese restaurant.

The appetizers include standard fare that you’d expect: egg rolls, wontons, and steamed & fried dumplings. And some that you wouldn’t: tofu with fresh cilantro salad, 5-spiced calamari, and Szechwan chopped ribs. From the latter we chose the tofu with fresh cilantro. This is a dish of which enough praises cannot be sung! First the dish is served chilled; the tofu is nicely cubed and is covered with light layer of cilantro salad mixed with red pepper. The whole thing sits on top of a small pool of soy sauce. The result is a piquant, delicious dish that packs quite a spicy wallop—at least to my by now Minnesota palate.

For our entrées we chose two dishes family style. Chinese eggplant with garlic sauce (eggplant with sliced onions and bell peppers in a spicy garlic & ginger sauce) and duck with mustard green (slices of boneless roasted duck with pickled mustard greens, peapods & tree mushrooms). The eggplant was delicious if slightly overcooked; the onions and bell peppers covered with a garlic sauce were divine. The whole thing worked beautifully with the white rice served with it. The duck was meaty and just as good—recently I have been having a great run with duck. Restaurant Alma and the Bakery on Grand have excellent duck dishes—the pickled mustard greens mixed in with mouthful of duck and white rice gave the right piquant flavor. Exquisite!

If there is a fly in the ointment here it must be the dessert. But come to think of it the Chinese are not known for their dessert. We wanted to share an order of green tea ice cream but our most pleasant waiter bought out two orders. After a taste we both dismissed the ice cream as not worthy of the great meal we’d just had; but be as it may we did polish off the ice cream!

If you aren’t up with the Chinese calendar you should know that the Chinese just celebrated their New Year (Year of the Monkey, was it?) and to mark the occasion Rainbow is offering a New Year menu at dinner time. Before writing this review I returned to Rainbow and asked if I might get the New Year menu but I was chased out by a little septuagenarian Chinese lady: "No go! No go!" She said. I mumbled a hurried thanks and walked out into the night.