Jose Andres never stood a chance. I walked in cynical AF, and I walked out just the same. The man openly admits that he doesn't know how to make Asian food. He goes a step further to admit he fears that which he cannot create and yet he somehow gets the gall to fuse a food he cannot cook with a cuisine with which he is all too familiar.
Except it's not really fusion. Aside from slipping you a little (duck) tongue inside a taco, they separate the Mexican and the Asian pretty clearly.
We stick to the Asian side because that's what we're craving, and the Har Gow are quite good. They get that thin, see-through wrapper right, and the filling is impressively tender. The shrimp is far less detectable than the pork, but overall it's still a solid dumpling.
I wish I could say the same about the XiaoLongBao. Doughy, crude, undercooked wrappers encase a delicate practically-consommé...What the hell kind of broth is this? Did they seriously just take a dumpling from a culture that cooks every scrap of food because it can't afford to waste and fill it with the juice of a baby cow? What. The. F.
Fortunately, their take on the Dan Dan Mian is much more acceptable. They do a lovely hand cut al dente noodle, and the barely-spicy ground pork sauce is clean and simple.
The Liang Fen is less firm than the more authentic ones I've had, but they're not at all mushy. The chili sauce has a gentle bite to it, and the turnip butterflies make me smile.
Dessert is Mango Sticky Rice, the only truly fusion item we ordered. It's made well, and it's an enjoyably sweet, fruity and creamy mix, but I can't get over the fact that it tastes like mango sticky rice without the pulpy, dripping juices of sun-ripened Thai yellow mango. It lacks the firmly gummy texture of sticky rice, and there is no oozy, creamy coconut sugar-milk to be found. It's mango sticky rice stripped of everything that makes it mango sticky rice, and I cannot say I like that better. Also, this is not a Chinese dish.
China Poblano didn't turn out all that bad in the grand scheme of things, but I just don't get it. First of all, if you're trying to break into a cuisine you have no experience with, maybe don't start with all their most beloved and iconic foods. I can honestly say that nothing here was by any means inedible or completely unpleasant, but nothing was memorable, and there wasn't a single dish the demonstrated creativity or skill.
Jose Andres was honest about his trepidation about Chinese food, but he then chose to create an entire restaurant based on that. Nothing all that wrong with the food, but it's all a little too clean, simple, unfortunately, too boring. It tastes exactly like a meal someone who is afraid of Chinese cooking would make, and it's not something I ever need to taste again.
No comments:
Post a Comment