If you’re allergic to shopping malls, rest easy:  it’s entirely possible to complete your Christmas shopping along Magazine Street, easily New Orleans’ best shopping thoroughfare.  From downtown (the D-Day Museum gift shop, New Orleans Glassworks) to the Garden District (House of Lounge, Branch Out vintage shop, Buffalo Exchange, American Apparel), to the farthest reaches of Uptown (Martin’s Wine Cellar, Earthsavers, Gentry, Perlis), you can shop ’til you drop.  But stop before you drop and have lunch at Jung’s Golden Dragon II (3009 Magazine St), a way-better-than-average-for-New-Orleans Chinese restaurant.

With a standard Americanized menu and a Chinese menu printed on yellow paper, Jung’s will wake up your fatigued palate with szechuan chicken (pictured above), soup dumplings, shrimp & pork shu mai, and more veggie options (gai lan with oyster sauce pictured at right) than six combined area Chinese joints.  Leave room for dessert–La Divina Gelateria’s original location is next door, and you don’t want to miss the peppermint straciatella or (back for winter) grapefruit & campari flavors.  And Sucre’s chocolates are  a few steps away, so you can check another gift off your list since you’re already parked.

So save your sanity and skip Lakeside Mall and PF Chang’s….