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2016-07-31
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The Parish is an Enoteca group restaurant whose executive chef is Jack Carson, from the now-defunct Restoration, Jack's Chicken, and The Drunken Duck. My friends and I were never all that excited about Restoration, I never made it to Jack's Chicken, and I was quite disappointed in The Drunken Duck. Still... I can't quite shake the idea that maybe good Southern (US) food is possible in HK. So last night, we gave The Parish a whirl.The menu, which is helpfully available online at the Enoteca group
The menu, which is helpfully available online at the Enoteca group's website, is about half small plates/ oysters/ salads and half entrees/ sides.
Additionally, there are specials, and we ordered one of them, the pulled pork nachos. The first thing we noticed was that these nachos had "nacho cheese sauce," the stuff of American ballparks on them. We had a discussion about whether this was appropriate, and came to the conclusion that no, at a high end restaurant, something better is called for. The second bad choice I think was the giant glob of sour cream just dumped right on the top. I liked the chips and the pulled pork well enough, but in the end, I think I'd pass in the future. Not terrible at all, just not really worth it either.
The next thing we got was fried green tomatoes w/ creole dressing and feta ($78). I liked these. You get 8 slices of fried green tomato, and the feta and dressing, in my opinion, are wholly unnecessary. The tomatoes are nice and tart on the inside, crispy on the outside. I would indeed get this again.
The tasso mac and cheese ($88) was a little disappointingly small. It was on the "small plates" menu, to be fair, but I'm such a glutton for these things. I was a little wary ordering this, because I am in the minority of people who think that things like bacon and ham just ruin dishes where cheese is meant to star, by being overwhelming. But I will say that I didn't even notice the tasso in the tasso mac and cheese.I liked the consistency of the cheese sauce, and its strong cheesy taste. We thought it was a little undersalted, but that was remediable, and indeed remedied by us.
One thing I wouldn't have noticed, but my pregnant friend who is trying to avoid raw vegetables did notice is that literally everything we got came with either a handful of green onions or of watercress thrown on top.
Our main dish was the Jack's fried chicken, watermelon pickles, and tabasco aioli ($188 for a half chicken in 4pcs). I don't think we ate any sauce. Who puts sauce on fried chicken? OK, Koreans, but...Anyway, I liked the breading. It wasn't the crispy crunchy stuff, but it was still crisp and not soggy. The piece I got, and a piece one of my friends got, was aggressively seasoned with some type of cajun seasoning, which I didn't particularly care for, but other pieces were less densely covered with it. The chicken was reasonably juicy. It definitely lived up to expectations.
I'm not really a grits person. In general, I'm not really into small grainy dry gritty things. Couscous for instance, blech. But sometimes grits are fine, and these were fine. This was not the menu item "creamy corn grits" but rather a special, the goat cheese grits. They were very fluffy and soft, with a faint cheesy flavor, not a super strong one like the mac and cheese.
Finally, we got some vegetables (notice the green onions on top!), and these were pretty good. All sides are $48, including this and the grits.I was pretty decently satisfied by this place. Compared to Restoration, the menu items are more exciting, and compared to the Drunken Duck, the concept I think is more coherent. Of course, we just ate all the cheesy stuff and fried stuff, but that's why I care about Southern food in the first place, and this place did pretty well.
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