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In the gifted hands of Ten Vong, who grew up in family-owned Chinese restaurants in Baltimore, Yumcha is more Chinese and less Pan-Asian. Vong dreams up Chinese dishes for the 21st century—the same sophisticated new cuisine celebrated now in Shanghai and Beijing. Vibrant evidence are the luscious udon-noodle salad with citrus sorbet, and delicate lobster shumai with crème fraîche and caviar making calligraphy on the plate. The challenge, Vong says, was divining menu prose to evoke a Chinese aesthetic. Such blatant cuteness might annoy if the food weren't so good. A smartly tart pomegranate-and-vodka Red Dragon puts me in the mood to be amused by "Concubine's forbidden pleasure" (those noodles), and "Fisherman wanders hither," ethereal scallops in a water-chestnut broth with pork belly. What we are eating is impressive and reasonably priced: maple-glazed five-spiced quail; Peking duck revisited ("Red Emperor returning North"); and ginger-lacquered veal cheeks, a.k.a. "Maiden contemplating fields of eternal spring."

Maple-glazed five-spiced quail, $11; Peking duck, $23; ginger-lacquered veal cheeks, $23