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This is Chinese cooking from the northeast hinterlands of Dongbei, formerly known as Manchuria, and if you were reared on sesame noodles and kung pao chicken, it might as well be from another planet. The spectacular “Muslim lamb chop” is like nothing you’ve ever seen—a braised, battered, and deep-fried slab of chewy, fatty, muttony ribs encrusted with a spice rack’s worth of cumin seeds, dried chiles, and black and white sesame seeds: the everything bagel of meats. The cabbage-y “mixed vegetable with green bean sheet jelly” bathed in chile oil is coleslaw reimagined by a pyromaniac. There’s sauerkraut in the pork dumplings and what seems like spaetzle in the “homemade-style blotch soup.” (Or are they blotches?) As the meal progresses, the number of culinary influences only increases: Russian, Korean … is that what they eat in Inner Mongolia? And just when you think you’ve seen it all, out comes the combination sweet potato-taro-and-apple plate—a leaning tower of cubed fruit and tuber spackled together by molten caramel. You extract the cubes, dip them into a bowl of water to cool and crystallize, then you swear the closest relation to this absurdly delicious Seussian concoction has got to be the French croquembouche. — Robin Raisfeld & Rob Patronite

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