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2011-11-27
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This is the sort of restaurant you'd find a lot of expats standing around the bar, crowded like sardines, talking over each other and the music, creating a "vibrant atmosphere" that one could use to describe this place. Most of the staff were non-Chinese too, and most Chinese there were back-from-overseas and speaking perfect English, so really, this is a place where positive discrimination against expats would make you feel right at home, maybe a new buzzing restaurant in Manhattan, Melbourne o
Being one of the few Chinese there with an expat boyfriend, the staff generally would introduce the menu to my bf, offer daily special recommendations to my bf, take the orders from my bf, and despite my best effort to make eye contact, it went mostly undetected. The table we were given was small, and we had to play Tetris with the dishes to make them all fit in the space allocated. Also we were a little too close to the next door couple, who insisted on leaning over the food every 5 minutes for a snog. A little PDA is fine, but when it's so in your face, then they should be giving a warning for ruining others' appetite. The wine glass was dainty, meaning rather small, and 3-4 gulps would be what you'd get out of it. The beer glass could be considered a large shot glass. Water was Soho-ly priced, and the food up the ante.
That is not to say the food wasn't decent, it was creative and daring in combining different flavours and spices to give the done-to-death yakitori a modern twist. The choices were adequate, but there are only so many parts to the chicken that westerners would try. Chicken's feet, brain, and various innards were nowhere to be seen, though I never knew that chicken had knees as per their menu (?cartilage). Looking around, other diners went for various non-chicken options which appeared quite appealing. We went for the Yardbird salad which was interesting, the cherry shrimp with spinach which I preferred over the Yardbird. The yakitori were fantastic, hands down. The breast was tender and juicy, while the meatball was firm and well minced without losing that meatiness to it. I personally prefer the meatballs with chopped up cartilage in it to give it that extra crunchiness though.
The chili cauliflower was evenly cooked without being too soft and falling apart, though the batter was a bit too mushy, a slightly lighter and crispier one would have worked better for me. The mushroom rice came in a sizzling black stone pot, and had lots of different mushrooms in it, giving it an aromatic, earthy tone, whilst balanced with crunchy garlic slices and fresh chives.
And as a take home present, we had 2 little packets of their home blend chili powder, which I had generously sprinkled over most of my food throughout the dinner. Post
