By Paul Reidinger

IN MY NEOPHYTE years as a publisher's assistant, I sometimes managed to get myself invited to the fancy restaurant dinners the publisher sprang for when some fancy writer or other was in town and in need of being fawned over. Thus my introduction to Marrakech and the Rusty Scupper, to take two examples. My writ of luck did not run limitlessly, however; I never managed to connive my way into an invite to La Mere Duquesne or, alas, to the Mandarin, which was the place the publisher took the grandest and/or most difficult people, the ones who would not be satisfied with anything less than the Peking duck, which you had to order a day ahead.

But then, as then-governor Jerry Brown was wont to say, that was then and this is now. The Mandarin is still there, 36 years after its founding by Cecilia Chang as a house of Chinese fine dining; it still occupies a glorious space – of exposed brick walls, antique Chinese wood carvings, and sweeping bay views – in Ghirardelli Square, to which the tourists, euros ajingle in their pockets, are finally returning, like the swallows to San Juan Capistrano. I feared, as we trekked our way up several flights of expensively carpeted steps (there is an elevator for the less athletic), that we were throwing ourselves into a den of out-of-townerness.

But if there were no literary grandees in evidence (not that one was looking), neither was the crowd a mob of ill-dressed rubes from Palookaville. The patronage near us consisted of a large convocation of well-dressed middle-aged people who gave every sign of being locals (Russian Hillers, perhaps?), a young Asian couple sequestered at an out-of-the-way table, and a group with several cameras on straps. Tourists, then, are not strangers to the Mandarin, but neither are the people who live nearby, nor the people who (like us) live slightly less nearby but regard the Mandarin as a worthy destination, not a museum exhibit from the city's restaurant past.

If the place is still a destination, that is in large part because the cooking is sharp. There is a lot of indifferently prepared Chinese food out there, not all of it confined to low-rent linoleum-and-fluorescent-light lounges that emphasize oily takeout, but the kitchen at the Mandarin sets the standard for fresh snappiness. For proof we turn to the string beans à la Szechwan ($10.50, or part of "The Mandarin," a fixed-price, multicourse dinner for two or more); the first thing you notice is the garlicky heat (the beans are flecked with bits of red chili pepper), and the second thing you notice is that the beans have been gently wok-seared to the famous tender-crispness you always read about in Chinese cookbooks but don't always find out in the field, where a certain flaccidity tends to prevail.

The food ("northern Chinese," according to the menu, a phrase our Chinese-savvy friend didn't ascribe much meaning to) is surprisingly spicy. Hot and sour soup ($6.50), though mild-mannered in appearance with its bamboo shoots and slices of tofu, carried a strong double charge of vinegar and white pepper. (It was slightly undersalted but made me sneeze.) Mongolian beef ($12.95) featured tender strips of meat and a wealth of chopped, near-raw onions in a glistening, hoisin-based sauce infused with plenty of chili pepper. (You know a dish is going to have some scorch potential when you see whole dried chilis bobbing in the sauce, like buoys near a shoal.) And prawns à la Szechwan ($13.95) brought a nice heap of shelled shrimp swimming in a reddish, sweet-hot goo that reminded me a little too much of cocktail sauce jumped up with some Tabasco.

The prawns were the only spicy dish I thought could use some recasting. Meanwhile, there were more demure, but no less tasty, dishes to consider. Spring rolls ($5.50) stuffed with shredded carrot and cabbage were beautifully deep-fried, and if they seemed slightly underseasoned, they responded nicely to the dishes of mustard and sweet sauce served on the side. Velvet chicken ($11.95) was the apotheosis of Chinese mildness with style: not a fleck of hot chili nor a hint of garlic about the plate, but a flavor – of wine and shiitake mushrooms – that gained intensity with each bite. (Snow peas added welcome crunch and color.) And tea-smoked duck ($19 for half a bird) actually did carry a whiff of tea, in addition to being sliced into easy-to-eat sections and having nicely bronzed skin and a favorable ratio of meat to bones. A finger dish of hoisin sauce on the side was a nice touch that wasn't really necessary; the duck was tasty and moist enough to stand on its own.

Service was extremely professional, with each table attended by several water-pourers and dish-clearers whose sense of when to appear and disappear was acute. It was not our server's fault, surely, that the dry German Riesling we wanted was out of stock, though it must have been somebody's fault that we weren't offered an alternative at the same price. But as complaints go, that is rather small (pardonnez-moi) beer. The Mandarin, as it approaches 40 (crisis time for people!), has aged like fine port, becoming deeper and richer with time while retaining the whiff of freshness that tells of eternal youth.

The Mandarin. 900 North Point (at Polk, in Ghirardelli Square), S.F. (415) 673-8812. Daily, 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Full bar. American Express, Diners Club, Discover, MasterCard, Visa. Not noisy. Wheelchair accessible.