Sweet Station, Chicago

Sweet Station seems designed to make the eyes pop and the head spin. And that's before you even dig into unusual (but beloved in Hong Kong) combinations such as stir-fried ox tongue and asparagus or preserved olive, shredded pork, and string beans. Behind big glass windows made for leisurely watching the Chinatown action at all hours is a candy-colored spaces with walls printed in electric green and orange patterns. Then there's the menu, whose dishes it might take hours even to enumerate, much less decide among.

Beginning at the top, there are the namesake sweets: milkshakes, cake rolls, and a considerable selection of sweet soups, to name a few. Comfy mod furniture facilitates settling in for an afternoon with a hot drink and a tower of pastries. Or, given the hours, a diner in the neighborhood could begin the day with congee and milk tea, stop in for a lunch of barbecue pork, and sit down for an entire mini-wok of sizzling clam soup at 1 a.m. Thankfully for intrepid menu explorers, plates are priced and portioned to facilitate sharing lots of dishes with a group of friends, but even so, it'd take a very long time to work one's way through the menu down to its odd corners filled with curries, baked spaghetti, and even a portuguese pork-chop sandwich. The Chicago Reader sums up Sweet Station's appeal as follows: "With its mammoth menu and reasonable prices, this is the kind of place that invites adventurous eating,"