You Gotta Try This: How The Mandarin’s signature garlic shrimp calls back to the ’80s

This is “You Gotta Try This,” The Bee’s series featuring one particular must-have dish at a local restaurant. Each featured dish is nominated by a reader and chronicled at sacbee.com. Got a menu item you want to shine some light on? Email reporter Benjy Egel at begel@sacbee.com.

There’s something comforting about finding a restaurant relic in Sacramento’s rapidly changing food scene. A place that’s stuck by its founding era in decor, food and ambiance as the years have gone by sequesters away a slice of Sacramento from back when the city had no business being any sort of tourist destination.

Such is the case at The Mandarin, opened in 1981 by Steve and Kay Lee Helmrich and now owned by their son Michael in Arden Plaza Shopping Center. The 161-item menu has seen additions over time, including about 40 over the last eight years. But all recipes for original items remain intact — including the spicy garlic shrimp in wine sauce, which Michael Helmrich said remains The Mandarin’s best-selling item.

“It’s a must-try. Best dish in the house,” said the younger Helmrich. “Order it. If you don’t like it, I’ll finish for you. I love it. I’ve eaten it for 38 years, and I can’t get enough of it.”

The dish starts with peeling 14 Indian shrimp, about the size of a silver dollar each and which weigh out to half-pound total. The shrimp are then dusted with corn starch and, once flames shoot 3 feet tall around a wok, flash-fried for about 45 seconds.

The wok stays hot to cook sugar, Chablis table wine from Napa Valley, Kikkoman soy sauce, Chinese red chilis, white pepper, garlic and Gekkeikan sake from Folsom together into a sticky amalgamation of heat and sweet. Sugar acts as the sauce’s thickening agent, rendering additional cornstarch unnecessary, Helmrich said.

A cook might add The Mandarin’s “death paste” (habaneros, Dave’s Insanity hot sauce, garlic and onions) based on how spicy the customer wants their dish. Beyond that, all that’s left is putting the shrimp in a bowl, pouring the sauce over and adding a few whole garlic cloves and chopped scallions.

“Some people like it. Some people like eating fresh cloves of garlic,” Helmrich said. “Now again, if you are on a date, you might want to make sure you both eat it.”

The spicy garlic shrimp in wine sauce comes with hot-and-sour-soup and vegetable fried rice for lunch ($11.50) or a larger, a la carte portion for dinner ($18.50).

The Mandarin’s hot-and-sour soup is made from chicken broth (or vegetable broth upon request), white pepper, soy sauce, raw tofu, bamboo shoots, black mushrooms, whipped eggs, cornstarch and white vinegar, all cooked together. The vegetable fried rice mixes steamed white rice, soy sauce, white pepper, peas, carrots and scrambled eggs.

A Taiwan native, Kay Lee Helmrich worked at Frank Fat’s in the 1960s, then the SooHoo family’s Ming Palace and Ming Tree in the 1970s before opening a Shakey’s Pizza franchise at Hazel Avenue and Greenback Lane in Orangevale. She eventually dropped the franchise tag, added a Chinese kitchen and reopened as Kay’s 2 Worlds, which she sold a few years after opening The Mandarin in 1981.

The Helmriches also owned Kay Lee’s in the Howe ’Bout Arden shopping center in 1988, but closed it after finding most of their customers were regulars at The Mandarin — thus stealing business from their other restaurant, Michael Helmrich said.

Though Steve and Kay Lee gradually slid into retirement a few years ago, they frequently eat in The Mandarin’s dining room, where time seems to stand still among the white tablecloths and black-framed burgundy chairs. And Kay Lee keeps an eye on Michael and his staff’s cooking, making sure things don’t stray too far from the original recipes.

“I ask (my parents) to come back and show their faces as much as possible, because they are The Mandarin,” Helmrich said. “If you come in today have a dish that’s really good and you come back 10 years from now, it’s going to be the same because nothing changes.”

THE MANDARIN

4321 Arden Way, Sacramento, (916) 488-4794

Info: http://themandarinrestaurant.com/

Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 4 to 9:30 p.m. Sunday.

Pro Tip: The next most-popular item after the spicy garlic shrimp in wine sauce might be Mike’s Mandarin Mai Tai. Bartenders use the original mai tai mix as back in the 1980s, plus orange juice, pineapple, grenadine, white rum and a healthy layer of Old Lahaina dark rum on top.

This story was originally published December 16, 2019 at 5:00 AM.