In the red

If Mama Wong’s Dumpling Noodle House has a specialty, it’s translating the Chinese dining experience for Western palates. Interior spaces are painted in rich, lucky red and illuminated with Chinese globes. An open kitchen exposes the inner workings of food making. A small bar out back serves cocktails and gives the room a Shanghai opium-den ambience. The house specialties are hand-pulled noodles and dumplings. A list of back-home staples – spring rolls, kung pow chicken, sweet and sour pork – rounds out the menu. Nothing is more than $5. There are quiet tables upstairs for when the crowds come, but the best seats are down on the ground level, where life on Street 308 ambles by with all the urgency of afternoon tea. Mama Wong’s, #41 Street 308.