City: Colorado Springs, CO

Category: Restaurants

Telephone: (719) 594-9343

Address: 5670 N. Academy Blvd.

Description: Jack and Jennie Hu specialize in what they call “gourmet Chinese” at their Silver Pond restaurant, which has been a local favorite since it opened in 1996. What sets them apart from many Asian eateries is that the owner also is the chef. Jack does most of the cooking, from hand-shaping the dumplings to crafting special sauces for dishes he concocts. She’s Chinese, but grew up in Vietnam, and he hails from Taiwan. Their combined ethnic backgrounds bring a lot of fascinating flavors to their dishes. Customers love the restaurant’s elegant black-white-and-red decor, but they love more the avocado-shrimp appetizer, the tender salt-and-pepper calamari, and the scallion pancakes. Favorite dishes include strawberry chicken or scallops and shrimp in the house red garnet sauce or spicy duck in Peking sauce. Everything is made fresh and from scratch and each plate is presented like a work of art. They make egg rolls fresh every day. Nothing is fried twice. They serve brown rice as well as steamed and fried rice and offer a large vegetarian menu. Meats are top quality and well trimmed of fat and they use white meat chicken in most chicken dishes. You won’t find lamb in most Asian restaurants, but you will here! Silver Pond doesn’t use MSG. And, unlike most Asian restaurants, they have a nice selection of desserts. The restaurant regularly wins “best of” surveys by local media.