Dim Sum at Jade Garden, Chinatown

April 21, 2008

I don’t think I really need to explain much about the Dim Sum at Jade Garden. Almost everyone agrees that it’s the best dimsum in town (at least on this side of the water), and I’ve yet to find evidence to refute that. As you can tell from the crowds, it’s safe to say that most people are already in the know about JG.

This is just an excuse to post pretty pictures.

A packed floor.

Essentials.

Shrimp Noodles. The mushroom ones are really good too.

Sesame Balls, sweet bean inside. I always get these though I only eat one.

Little greasy footballs of meat, Egg tarts, and in the back some toasted pork buns.

Pork Spareribs. Ain’t no thang.

Shumai, set of four. Soon to be set of zero.

This one is new! Cabbage, imitation crab, mushroom, pork I think. Pretty great.

Ha Gao. You can count the folds, they do indeed have 11 - 13 (perfect).

Eggplants with breaded shrimp, together at last.

Good Work.

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Boom Noodle on Capitol Hill

April 20, 2008

Boom Noodle has become somewhat of an emblem of the rampant gentrification of Capitol Hill. The restaurant is a yuppie magnet, complete with its pan-asian leanings and its ultra-modern choice of decor. But despite the restaurant sticking out like a sore thumb amongst the dank bars and venues that dominate Pike St, Boom Noodle does well for itself and seems to be packed on a nightly basis.

I’ve always reasoned that a clever restaurateur could open up a ramen/udon type place in the heart of Seattle and become local heroes. It wouldn’t have to be anything fancy, just large, visible and traditional. Samurai Noodle’s working on the first two points, but until that U-district shop opens up I’ll still be looking for the noodle shop of my dreams. When I first saw the “Boom Noodle coming soon” signs, I was incredibly excited, thinking that my prayers had been answered. Alas, this is not the case.

The recurring theme for Boom Noodle is that a lot of what they do “sounds good on paper.” The ideas, both culinary and design-wise, make a lot of sense initially, but are executed in a clumsy fashion that removes all appeal. And the flaws should’ve been apparent to anyone, but seem to be intentionally unaddressed for the sake of style. It’s not one simple mistake after another, but rather it’s an innate flaw with the general philosophy of Boom Noodle.

For instance, the bench seating makes sense as an homage to traditional ramen spaces in Japan, with it’s close-quarters seating, rubbing elbows with your fellow patron as you suck back a bowl of noodles. But, this is not a crowded ramen shack, rather this is a large, almost auditorium sized space. Removing the functional bench seating from its natural context strips the design of its charm, transforming what once was a necessary construct of the small ramen shop into an encumbrance, a unintentionally heinous plan to stuff the maximum amount of customers in a space so that profits are maximized and service is compromised.

I will, however, eat in a dimly lit upside down garbage can if the food is fantastic. Great style and great food aren’t always found in the same package, as the bulk of Chinatown will attest. But as I said before, there is something incredibly unintelligent about the way Boom Noodle chooses to execute pretty much anything they do, and that includes the food.

I knew I was in trouble when I tasted these appetizers, soy sauce marinated eggs. Being Chinese, I’ve had my share of soy sauce soaked eggs. The tang of a hardboiled egg-white infused with soy sauce is irresistible to me. But these eggs don’t taste like they’ve been marinated, more like they’ve been browned slightly, like some oriental easter egg hunt. Though the presentation is nice, they lack in any sort of distinctive flavor.

This yakisoba looked and tasted like the DIY yakisoba on the shelf of the grocery store. The sauce was thick and overbearing, and the ingredients were par for the course. Simply unremarkable, but expensive.

Sure, these salmon slices look pretty, but again Boom Noodle left the flavor on the kitchen counter when they sent these out. Slightly seared, with sea salt and some ponzu, they went down quickly but were instantly forgotten.

Someone needs to explain to them that the cold silky tofu you get at an izakaya isn’t just unpacked, cubed and sent out. I actually like the stack of veggies (bamboo shoot, shiitake, seaweed), but the tofu itself is crumbly and cold. But the real crime on this plate is the inclusion of a really classless peanut sauce. Tofu served like this is supposed to let the clean, refreshing quality of bean curd mix with the crisp earthiness of the fresh garnish. What better way to emphasize that then include a dirty, heavy sauce that completely nullifies whatever else you were trying to do!

The Costco samples lady serves better gyoza.

These noodles were the best presented dish of the evening, the dinner ware and the serving cups were all very appealing to look at and use. Even though the noodles weren’t true soba noodles (they were more like rice noodles), the dish was edible and satisfying. I’m not a big nitpicker when it comes to the true identity of noodles, I know where to get authentic soba if I want it.

The okonomiyaki had too much pickled ginger on top. Eating it was not the most pleasant experience; I quickly became disenchanted with the dish after picking at it for about 5 minutes. The hot peppers were an interesting feature but again, felt out of place and the dish was not well conceived as a whole. Also, it gave me some stomach pain about a hour later.

The ramen took way too long to get to our table (about an hour and a half), considering what was in the soupy broth. It was a standard ramen bowl with soy egg, pork cutlet, seaweed and noodles. You can get this bowl plus more noodles and some condiments at Samurai Noodle for around 7.00 (and that’s expensive I think!). Here at Boom Noodle it’s around ten dollars. That’s unheard of for something this basic. It’s not this expensive in Japan, even! Just your ordinary, overpriced yuppie bowl.

This dessert was the best part of the whole meal. Mango pudding with a sesame brittle flake, really classy and tasty to boot. It’s too bad that they can’t make an entrée to save their life.

So as far as the trip to Boom Noodle goes, I feel like it was a success at least journalistically, if not gastronomically. I’m not surprised that it was started by the Blue C sushi people. I can’t really explain why anyone would want to eat there unless they were curious to the point of masochism or simply ignorant. Why We Bite: eating there so you don’t have to.

PS: Sorry for the terrible pictures. If someone wants to be a photographer for a meal (and could give me the pics quickly / host them somewhere), I’d really appreciate it and would probably pay for your food too (don’t hold me to that).

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Benihana’s Downtown

April 5, 2008

Benihana’s is somewhat of a cultural phenomenon, resoundingly successful and endlessly imitated. It shouldn’t need much introduction: it’s the restaurant where you pay $40 to sit at a big hot plate where a Mexican guy in a brightly colored hat cooks a teriyaki steak for you. Sometimes they fling food into your mouth, sometimes they don’t. They always do that onion volcano trick, though.

The one in Seattle is located by (under?) the IBM building by Rainier Square, facing 5th. It’s been there a long time, as the pictures of celebrities on the walls show. There are really faded pictures of a thin Steven Seagal, a not so old Pat Morita, and a amusingly heroic Shawn Kemp so you can tell it’s pretty old. There are some newer celebrities as well, but they’re mostly Seattle athletes so who cares about them, am I right?

Benihana’s isn’t all metal tables and garish frat parties. There’s a waiting area and a bar, too!

The bar area is large and it incorporates a small sushi counter. There were some happy hour sushi deals that seemed fairly decent, the rolls and cuts that passed by me from time to time definitely didn’t skimp on the portions. Ordering sushi at Benihana’s is like ordering a salad at McDonald’s, but I was quickly growing delirious with hunger, so I got an appetizer california roll and some sushi. Not terrible, not great, it’s a california roll. What do you expect?

I didn’t really understand how their sake list was organized, so I ended up ordering one of the more expensive brands of sake. Everyone else at the table had water, which was probably the wiser decision. The sake I got wasn’t bad at all, but I could’ve gotten otokoyama for about half the price so I really screwed the pooch on that one.

It’s not surprising that the wait was taking forever. They make you wait for your entire party to arrive, even if they have to split you up anyways. So that guy who is fashionably late partially because he can’t find his way into Seattle from wherever the fuck he’s coming from? Don’t invite him. Because he’s not going to eat anything anyways. Eventually he showed up and we got to sit. They were very diplomatic about forcing us to sit at separate tables, and by diplomatic I mean courteous with terrible results.

The menu consists your meat orders, your seafood orders and your meat/seafood orders. The meat/seafood section consists of a dozen synonyms for “surf and turf.” I ordered the “splash n’ meadow” (I think that’s what it’s called). I think there was also something that was like the “boat and sea” or something, who knows. Basically you pick two meats and hope they don’t add up to more than $50. You can get stuff like yakisoba and scallops and some other stuff, but paying 20 dollars for something that obviously tastes like it costs 4 dollars is a bit too ridiculous for even this blog.

Most of the people ordered your normal teppanyaki grilling platters, except for one of us who ordered some sushi. Unfortunately, the sushi never came. Maybe the waitress forgot to place the order, maybe she wasn’t able to hear her order the food (it’s really loud inside Benihana’s hard to hear anything really, especially with drunken frat fucks one table over cheering every time they can remember their names), but the end result is someone didn’t get dinner that night.

Our chef’s name was Miguel, and he brought out his cart of sauces and instruments and proceed to do his thing. He did the flaming onion volcano, and he cooked our meats. There really wasn’t much showmanship to his flair, just kind of going through the motions of flipping his knives around and tossing bits of stuff into his hat.

The fascinating thing about Benihana’s success is that the process is so transparent that someone should’ve caught on by now. I mean, you can see how terrible your cut of meat is, how small your shrimp look before they cook it, the very base ingredients that go into your sauces, the wilted lettuce, the limp carrots, etc. Instead of hiding it in some “mystery meats” “house salad” “secret sauce,” Benihana’s is simply stating, “these are the shitty ingredients that go into what you are paying too much to eat.” But people still go. It still gets packed. The food is safe and the chef’s antics are amusing.

My food definitely did not taste like it should have cost 25 dollars. The prawns were small, grocery store style shrimp, like they were hot pot ingredients rather than main course material. The steak was not a generous cut at all and did not seem particularly juicy or tantalizing.

So in the end Benihana’s felt like an overpriced exercise in this dated food-entertainment hybrid experience. I don’t think anyone at the table was really happy with their meal and it’d be hard to get me to go there even for a birthday or as a favor (maybe if I wasn’t paying). Maybe if I had been eating with Pat Morita I would’ve had a better time.

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