If you're looking for a very fine Chinese meal (in most unpretentious surroundings), then So's your man.

So Good is not exactly undiscovered. I'm not letting you in on a little secret gem I've found all by myself. It is, in fact, wildly busy, particularly on the weekend when, unless you've booked ahead, you'll probably be standing in the cold doorway behind a half-dozen others, debating whether it's worth the wait.

Peter So and his wife, Kitty, run the So Good Restaurant at 717 Somerset St. W. His place is a dozen-ish tables, some set with floral wipe-easy cloths, some blue and bare, surrounded with mix-and-match chairs that need a scrub. The big window that looks out on Somerset is lined with un-hemmed jersey fabric, a slightly darker hue of pink than the walls. On the walls are Upper Canada and Sleeman Brewery blackboards on which a few daily food specials, some beer prices and an ad for a magnetic bangle to relieve rheumatic pain are featured. Red Christmas bows still decorate the bar. A jar of Maxwell House sits on a cluttered shelf.

I've eaten two meals at So's in the past month and both generated doggy bags, which in turn provided two other meals. With only two exceptions, everything we ate was excellent.

I have two complaints I'll get out of the way: The first is the length of the menu, which, at 300 items-strong is, in my opinion, insane. And the second is the use of MSG. You can, it would seem (and I discovered this on my second visit) ask for it to be left out, but the soup broth seems to have already been treated with the potent flavour enhancer. (When everything else tastes so good at So Good's, why is there any of the white stuff in the place?)

It's a shame about the MSG in soup No. 22 for the strips of pork were tender, the Chinese greens vibrant and just-tender, the cubes of tofu were milky soft, the seasoning perfectly pleasant. It was only the broth that had that stench of the "magic powder" I dislike so intensely. And the hot-and-sour soup seems to have the hots but not the taste.

So Good spring rolls were fine, the Cantonese ones stuffed with chicken, cabbage and perfumed with five-spice powder, the deep-fried Vietnamese ones stuffed with shredded vegetables, pork, chicken and shrimp and very tasty. The Shanghai dumplings and the Hunan dumplings were both excellent. And from there we had a parade of main dishes of which the Indonesian shrimp may have been the favourite (with julienned peppers, onion, fresh shrimp in a good peanut sauce), closely tied with the steamed bass, the beef with lemongrass, the eggplant in spicy garlic sauce and the Hunan lamb with leek. The Singapore noodles were greaseless, spicy, flavourful, while the whole fresh striped bass was steamed just right with ginger and green onion in a sesame, soya- enhanced broth. The peanut sauce on the Wu Se chicken had depth and heat and the lamb that floated in a sweet, spicy Hunan-style sauce was remarkably tender, coloured with perfectly cooked peppers, strips of soft leek, shiitake mushrooms and vibrant carrots.