Under a massive green awning on Broadway resides an unassuming restaurant. Six days of the week, customers can walk beneath its shade and into a sparsely decorated, pale blue dining room. Large fans and watercolor pictures of fish spot the walls. Two red and gold streamers with massive pineapples draping from the middle assume their spots on the tiled ceilings. Simple chairs and plain white tables reside on a green carpet. Somewhere in the air, there's the spiraling hum of a recorded ghuzheng playing over the PA.

The no-frills restaurant isn't too loud for a young couple to have a regular conversation over a bowl of mu shu pork and hunan chicken. It isn't too visually overpowering for the elderly father enjoying the beef foo young with his middle-aged son, who is eagerly poking at his Peking duck. Rather than dwelling on sights and sounds, Mei Shung (a Best of Edgewater and WBBM Best Restaurant awards winner) focuses on the tastes and smells of its $6 lunches and $7-$26 dinners. Thelarge menu offers a mind-boggling array of choices, from appetizers to soups, classic noodle and rice dishes, to vegetables and bean curds.

Top off an in-house meal with Mei Shung's selection of smoothies ($2.95), including banana, papaya and pineapple coconut. Or you can opt to have your kiwi honey smoothie, Taiwanese sausage appetizer and lamb with hot bean sauce delivered to you.

Centerstage Reviewer: Nola Akiwowo