March 18, 2011
By XIYUN YANG, NAOMI LINDT, ROBYN ECKHARDT and JANE KITAGAWA
A look at notable restaurants that are worth a visit in four Asian cities.
Beijing
Wistaria Bridge
Dining in Beijing often feels like participatory performance art: spacey and surly waiters, endless menus in challenging and challenged English, confusion sprinkled liberally throughout. The experience can both frustrate and delight. One example of this odd combination is Wistaria Bridge, above, a restaurant that opened last year in the city’s tech district and serves up its personal take on classic Beijing food.
Confusion will probably begin the dual-language menu, which describes dishes like “braised Der Gelbfish” and “stir shell fish with Chinese little green.” Pictures help, and so might an overeager waitress who forgets drink orders, but is more than happy to practice her English.
But once the “pork with special wine” arrives, there will be no complaints. Squares of pork belly are braised with Chinese wine for nine hours over a whisper of a flame until fat and meat have melded together — only to melt away in your mouth.
Soy sauce braises are a classic Beijing technique; the adventurous should try the unfortunately named “Beijing style braised pork bowels” — a savory, tender, garlicky offal stew, served with glass noodles and topped with a nutty hot pepper oil. Another fine example is the “special pork kidney.” The dish, which is served cold, features a white pepper sauce with green garlic slivers. The kidney itself has a snappy texture and none of its usual pungency.
And the creative menu descriptions continue. “Deep fried duck cube with walnut” is marinated duck meat under an airy pillow of ground chicken and walnut, an unexpected twist on the city’s primary fowl. “Stir shell fish with Chinese little green” is dried clam’s foot stir-fried with bok choy sprouts — clean and grassy, with a tinge of ocean brine.
The star of the show, as in most restaurants in China, is the food, so it’s best not to be distracted with wondering how the Cubist stained-glass window fits in with the slate gray traditional courtyard interior and fake plastic cherry blossoms.
Wistaria Bridge (Ziteng Qiao), Zhongguancun Pedestrian Street (Zhongguancun buxingjie) R23; (86-10) 5986-3680. A meal for two is about 200 renminbi, or about $31 at 6.4 renminbi to the dollar. (All prices are without drinks or tip.) XIYUN YANG
Hanoi
La Coopérative
Opened by a group of French and Vietnamese friends in late 2009, La Coopérative materialized out of a shared passion for great food, conversation and ruou, Vietnamese rice liquor.
“There aren’t many places in Hanoi where foreigners and locals gather,” said Pham Viet Anh, an owner. “So we created a space where all of us would feel happy and be reminded of the beauty and culture of old recipes, both French and Vietnamese.”
The menu is split in two sections — “Tay” and “Ta,” loosely translated as “theirs” and “ours” — and is a lesson in the revelatory things that can happen when European and Asian flavors unite.
Following local custom, we ordered a number of dishes and shared everything. Buttery wheels of foie gras and fig terrine, accompanied by anise-infused mini-toasts, were enhanced by a deceptively simple steamed preparation of chayote and carrot, explosively flavored with salt, chopped peanuts and sesame seeds.
A warm lentil salad tossed with stewed tomatoes, braised chicken and a zingy, vinegar-based dressing dovetailed effortlessly with sweet, tender hunks of caramelized pork slow-cooked in a gingery fish sauce and served in a clay pot.
The bo cuon la cai is a do-it-yourself hand-roll: soft morsels of beef, butter lettuce, cilantro and an assortment of garnishes (pineapple, green banana, carrot, starfruit) are rolled in rice paper and dipped into a wasabi-rich soy sauce. Sweet, savory, bitter, tart and spicy, it captures the complexity for which Vietnamese cooking is revered.
In a nod to the past, food arrives on white dishes imprinted with the letters HTX, the abbreviation for hop tac xa, or “a cooperative”; they’re replicas of the government-manufactured plates and bowls used in the decade following reunification in 1975 — just one of the restaurant’s many thoughtful design touches, which also include weathered, wooden electrical cable spools standing in for tables and oversize cylindrical silk chandeliers.
In one of the three main dining areas, guests sit on floor cushions and eat at low tables, the traditional way. It’s quite taxing for the uninitiated, so the numerous wooden columns installed for weak backs come as a warm welcome.
La Coopérative, 46 An Duong; (84) 4-3716-6401; hoptacxa.net. An average meal for two is about 350,000 Vietnamese dong, or $17 at 20,339 dong to the dollar. NAOMI LINDT
Singapore
Salt Grill & Sky Bar
At a recent weekday lunch at Salt Grill & Sky Bar, right, suited executives shared pricey bottles of red wine and meticulously groomed ladies-who-lunch pored over a menu featuring caviar, foie gras and wagyu.
Yet Salt, which opened on the 55th and 56th floors of the prestigious Ion Orchard building last November, is anything but precious. The dining room, dressed in black, brown and taupe, isn’t opulent but it’s comfortable; stunning views, through floor-to-ceiling windows, are its “wow” factor. (An adjacent wine bar and intimate mezzanine cocktail bar share the same views.) And those expensive menu ingredients? They were added post-debut, a concession to lofty expectations engendered by the restaurant’s exclusive perch.
“We’re really not trying to do Singapore-style fine dining,” said Kathy Tindall, head chef. “But a lot of people come to a restaurant like this wanting to spend real money, and we want to make them happy.”
Salt is the latest addition to the Australian celebrity chef Luke Mangan’s growing culinary empire, which includes restaurants in Sydney, South Melbourne and Tokyo. His imprint is hard to miss, both tableside — where Mr. Mangan’s name adorns plates, cutlery, glassware, even salt and pepper grinders — and in the French, Asian and Modern Australian influences on the menu.
Ms. Tindall said she aspires to serve “not fancy or complicated food but nice, clean, simple dishes made with quality ingredients.” Indeed, the restaurant’s best preparations are its most straightforward.
The rich savoriness of deep-fried pastry “cigars” of confit of rabbit and mustard fruits is balanced by a bright apple and celeriac salad. In a Mangan signature dish, Australian yellowtail kingfish sashimi, goat feta and ginger strike a surprisingly harmonious chord.
Mains include steamed and sous-vided Petuna ocean trout, which arrives as a silky pink fillet, paired with tarragon-flecked warm potato salad. As might be expected of a kitchen with Antipodean origins, grilled items, like the crisp-skinned but moist barramundi fillet, are superb. That wagyu — rump or fillet — arrives appetizingly crusty, bathing in a shallow pool of mashed potatoes.
Licorice parfait with lime syrup, another Mangan invention, tops the dessert list. But the most pleasure is to be found in an uncharacteristically complex preparation: The strawberry soufflé, a cerise cloud rising several inches above the rim of its copper vessel, is uncomprehendingly featherweight yet infused with the fruit’s very essence. It makes the delicious pandan and coconut gelato served alongside borderline superfluous.
Salt Grill & Sky Bar, 2 Orchard Turn, Level 55-56, ION Orchard; (65) 6592-5118; saltgrill.com. An average meal for two, without drinks or tip, is about 185 Singapore dollars, or $149 at 1.25 Singapore dollars to the dollar. The two-course Executive Lunch Menu, Monday to Friday, is 40 Singapore dollars. The seven-course tasting menu is 140 or 200 Singapore dollars. ROBYN ECKHARDT
Tokyo
Vegetable Sushi Potager
(Note to Readers)
Can sushi be sushi without the fish? Aya Kakisawa certainly thinks so. The co-owner and chef of this decidedly vegetarian restaurant — the newer of two spots where she runs the kitchen — is winning plaudits for her commitment to healthful, vegetarian cooking, and her desire to imbue it with a sophisticated playfulness.
Situated in the swank Roppongi Hills shopping complex, Vegetable Sushi Potager seats about 37 at a pine and emerald resin U-shaped counter and a handful of semi-private areas. Diners can choose from two omakase menus, the Akane (5,250 yen, or $65 at 81 yen to the dollar), and the Hisui (8,400 yen); the latter features more courses, and both change every month or two. At a time when Japan is embroiled in free trade talks and there is much hand wringing over self-sufficiency, all food is sourced domestically and the staff takes great care to explain the origins of each dish.
During a recent visit, highlights included a starter of nonalcoholic purple sweet potato amazake “wine,” and a pale “potager style” steamed egg custard, which is perched daintily on a jeweled vegetable gelée, referencing Ms. Kakisawa’s French training. (Potager is the French term for a kitchen garden.)
Yet where the chef really excels is in dishes that not only resemble their fish-based counterparts, but are every bit as satisfying. Most successful is the carrot “uni” (sea urchin) sushi. A mousse of both regular and kintoki carrots — the latter a red orange species cultivated in Japan since the Edo period — it is marvelously iridescent and bears an uncanny resemblance to its fishy cousin.
Eyes were also drawn to the stunningly realistic “maguro” (tuna) sushi, actually a sliced tomato dabbed with a tomato compote and cheese. A cherry tomato stuffed with a medley of three kinds of rice was more visually sedate, but proved outstanding; its soft flesh sweetly exploded in the mouth, the risotto serving as a nutty riposte.
Ms. Kakisawa’s famous desserts — she also runs an outrageously successful “vegetable sweets” patisserie in trendy Nakameguro — run extra. The tomato, kiwi fruit and rosehip verrine with tomato sorbet (1,260 yen) was refreshing, yet subtle, proving that illusion isn’t always necessary.
Vegetable Sushi Potager, Roppongi Keyakizaka-Dori, Roppongi Hills, 6-9-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku; (81-3) 3497-8822; sushi-potager.com/en. Vegan menu available by advance reservation. JANE KITAGAWA
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