Went for lunch yesterday. Special Valentine’s Day offer, half off all bottles of rosé. All two that they had on the list.
The crispy tofu was great, I was expecting typical salt & pepper but this was something else. Crisp but moist and creamy inside, tossed with a Sichuanish mix of chiles and spices. I wonder if they used some sort of molecular gastronomy trick. If I were in the neighborhood I might stop in and get these for a snack.
The bao filling was far superior to the usual char siu in sugar syrup. Not sure what it was but the spicing was complex and balanced. I much prefer baked myself, don’t get the appeal of that soft white dough cloud.
Shandong beef rolls had nice texture and good beefy flavor but too much hoisin for my taste.
Peking duck was pretty good, lots of roast meat underneath the crisp skin. I think Daimo does the skin better and prefer their approach of serving the meat separately as a stir-fry. The buns were very nice and the way they serve them in the steamer with a plate on top holding the duck etc. kept everything warm. Scallions had been sitting around for a while and were dried out.
Chow fun was excellent, lots of wok hay. Makes me want to track down someplace closer to home that can reliably do that.
That was plenty of food for two but given the precise cooking and creative twists I ordered the sweet & sour pork out of curiosity. The texture of the fried pork was great, otherwise it was pretty standard old-school Chinese-American. Would have been better with old-school non-Gold pineapple but those seem to be extinct in the US.
I thought I posted about my previous lunch at this place. I’d heard that the venison chow fun, no longer on the menu, was very good, and it was. Can’t remember what else I tried.