It’s almost Christmas, which means family, presents, no school and, of course, Chinese food. Okay, maybe not that last one, but if the family in “A Christmas Story” can enjoy it, even with the be- heading of a goose in front of their eyes, I’m sure I can too. So I hopped in the Oldsmobile, drove to South China Chop Suey, and grabbed enough Chinese food to feed a small cow. It was absolutely delicious.

I was a little hesitant to try South China. From the outside, it looks like a place the mob would set up as a front for some illegal activity. For all I know that might be true, but I don’t care as long as I can still get some quality Chinese.

The variety of the menu is limitless; they have a bunch of different entrees, which can be made with anything from beef to shrimp to barbeque pork. I ordered fried rice, egg rolls, spicy cashew chicken, won ton soup and pot stickers.

I dug into the fried rice first. It was good, with

plenty of vegetables, chicken and eggs, while still maintaining a balanced ratio of ingredients. The only problem was the fact that it was slightly dry, but it was nothing a little sweet and sour sauce

couldn’t fix. The spicy cashew chicken was great; it had

moist chunks of chicken with the kind of spicy that leaves a burn in your throat, but doesn’t take

away from the flavors of the vegetables and sauce. The stand out of the dishes were the eggrolls. They are the size of a small maglite flashlight. The outside was crispy and sweet, kind of like a very thin pastry, and while I have an idea of what was inside of it, it was very tasty.

The letdowns of my consumption was the soup and pot stickers. It’s not that the soup was bad, but I expected more. It was chicken broth with three extra large wontons, which was something that I would expect out of a can of Campbell’s.

The potstickers, on the other hand, were flat out bad. They were heaps of dough with a mor- sel of pork in the middle. One side of each was browned while the rest was raw, chewy and hard to eat. I’m going to assume that they forgot to turn them over or something, because everything else was so good I’m hoping it is an anomaly.

Overall, I really liked South China, and it has become my family’s go-to spot for Chinese despite the dud potstickers. Everything else was like a glorious dragon spewing out fireworks in my mouth.