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2016-10-12
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Shanghai Dip24-hour braised pork leg, Stonecutter Scottish ale pork jus, cucumber pickles, CiabattaHK$98This was my first time to Second Draft. According to the South China Morning Post, the restaurant “is a collaboration between Young Master Ales and May Chow, chef and founder of Little Bao.” I’ve also read that the same “team” does TAP The Ale Project in Mong Kok, which I have never been to. I’m a little bit skeptical of Young Master, just because the first time I had their beer (at Beef and L
Rules: I just made up these rules, but I abided by them throughout the contest. Rule #1: Only one sandwich can be crowned The Ultimate Sandwich, and it must be one of the eight entrants. While Crave magazine is giving the award based on sales, my award is completely subjective, based on my own opinion. Rule #2: I must eat the sandwich exactly the way the restaurant serves it, with no additions or subtractions (unless they’re explicitly offered as a choice point): no sauces from the table, no salt, no pepper, nothing. Rule #3: Only The Ultimate Sandwich deserves a smiley-face review. If a restaurant pretends it has The Ultimate Sandwich, but then just has a regular old sandwich, then that restaurant is ipso facto only OK at best, and perhaps frowny-face at worst.]
Shanghai Dip24-hour braised pork leg, Stonecutter Scottish ale pork jus, cucumber pickles, Ciabatta
HK$98
This was my first time to Second Draft. According to the South China Morning Post, the restaurant “is a collaboration between Young Master Ales and May Chow, chef and founder of Little Bao.” I’ve also read that the same “team” does TAP The Ale Project in Mong Kok, which I have never been to. I’m a little bit skeptical of Young Master, just because the first time I had their beer (at Beef and Liberty), I didn’t like it (I said, I think, that it tasted like grass clippings). Little Bao has good food in my opinion, though perhaps a little aggressively sauced.
This place is very not like the rest of Tai Hang. It’s large, for one thing, and very bright. They could fit more tables in than they have, so there’s a real spaciousness to it. The chairs are nice. The servers and bartenders are very hipster-y. The music is eclectic. There are lots and lots of white people. It’s the kind of thing I’d think you’d move to Tai Hang to get away from. But it’s not a criticism, if that’s what you’re into.
It was a Saturday and public holiday to boot (National Day), so I was not able to obtain reservations the day before. They only do partial bookings though, so we planned to come early as walk-ins, and arrived at 6:30. We obtained four seats at the bar (for five people, so not terrible) and were seated after maybe thirty minutes, perhaps a little less. As a condition of obtaining the table we did, one of us had to sit on a backless stool, so that the waitstaff could move freely behind that person. The task fell to me, but I traded halfway through. The stool is uncomfortable, and that’s probably why I noticed the chairs are so nice.
I was with some relatively large eaters (in that they eat large portions, not that they themselves are large), so we ordered three appetizers. The first was the Edamole: “Edamame dip, dumpling chips, furikake.” According to Wikipedia, furikake “consists of a mixture of dried and ground fish, sesame seeds, chopped seaweed, sugar, salt, and monosodium glutamate.” The dip is thick and grainy like some hummus. It was fine, not offensively bean-y or anything, but definitely not great. Somebody at the table said, “It would be nice if it had some avocado in it. And some cilantro and lime juice.” That is, it’s trying to be a substitute to guacamole, but it’s wholly inferior to the real thing. The dumpling wrapper chips were very good though, and you get at least one refill complimentary.
As of this writing, Second Draft doesn’t have a website, so I only know the names of the soft-opening menu items that are posted here, not the other stuff. (For the millenials out there, no, a Facebook page with no menu is not a website.) Hence this is just “Squiddy Things.” People seemed to like them. I thought they weren’t super tough, but you can get much better squiddy things at, for example, Le Tambour. OK.
Here’s the soft-opening description of the Tai Hang Fries: “cumin dust, takana, dried chilli.” The dried chilli was just two dried chillies literally just tossed on top, exerting no influence on the flavor—this is a garnish, not an ingredient. The cumin dust was very noticeable smell-wise, but thankfully subdued flavor-wise. The yellow gloopy stuff is some sort of mayonnaise. For the obscure Japanese ingredient, I’ll let the Japan Times tell us, “Takana, or more accurately, takana-zuke, is made from pickled mustard leaf, and is mildly spicy and crunchy.” So, ya cai, but Japanese somehow. The fries were good and the table ate both baskets of them, but the construction was a little odd, because the thinness of the fries didn’t really let them pick up the takana, so most of the non-fry ingredients were there just to make it look nice, not to actually be ingredients.
Finally we get to the star of the review, the Shanghai Dip. I’ll repeat the description: “24-hour braised pork leg, Stonecutter Scottish ale pork jus, cucumber pickles, Ciabatta.” Some things are missing from the description. First, obviously, there’s cheese on it. I don’t know why you don’t advertise that. Second, if you look at my head on picture here:
You can see something distinctly cabbage-y hanging down, and there was definitely some sort of soggy cabbage thing on there. Thus far, missing ingredients had been a theme of my Ultimate Sandwich Competition experience, now I was getting extra ingredients. Let’s talk about the good things. It was on a ciabatta, and I don’t know precisely what makes a thing a ciabatta, but this was different from the more crunchy ciabatta at Bread and Beast. That isn’t a complaint, however, because a good dip sandwich needs to be the sort of thing that will get really soggy in the jus. The pork was very tender, as you’d imagine from 24 hour braising. You also got a fair bit of it.
Where the sandwich fell apart, in my opinion, is all its attempts at funky improvement on the classic French dip. First, while I like vinegary things on sandwiches, they’re questionable on a dip. And these were sweet cucumber pickles, which really is just ruining a good cucumber and fouling up the sandwich to boot. The mystery cabbage-y substance had a strange flavor to it too. My local friend who was there with me said, “It tastes like the Chinese [expletive] my mom would make,” and she didn’t mean that as a compliment. Finally, and the worst offender, was that the jus was very thick and sweet. I want lots of brothy beef consommé that I can dunk the sandwich in until it’s soaking, not some sweet paste.
Like the Edamole, the sandwich just left me wanting the real thing, not the thing I’d been given. If you want to improve on a classic, the first thing to do is improve it, not make it worse.
For illustration, here’s what some other people at the table got. Two of us got the Shanghai dip. Two of us got the Reuben:
And one friend of mine got the steak. I had a piece of the steak with the garlicky chimichurri sauce and it was good. In fact, the sandwich currently winning this competition [at the time I wrote this—the final results are below] is a steak and chimichurri sandwich from Knead, so I know Second Draft can produce good stuff, it’s just their entrant in the contest will not be winning it.Note on service: I was really impressed by the service at this restaurant. The servers were always around, they noticed when your glass was empty, they were knowledgeable about the menu and made recommendations. A really top-notch team.
(Highly Unofficial) Ultimate Sandwich Competition Results:
1. ***WINNER*** Bulgogi Roast Beef Sandwich – Jinjuu
2. Steak in Knead – Knead
3. Ultimate Smoked Pastrami & Cheese – Morty’s Delicatessen
4. Beef Bourguignon Banh Mi - Mrs. Pound
5. The Gentleman’s Sandwich – Beef & Liberty
6. Shanghai Dip – Second Draft
7. [Did not show] – Posto Pubblico
8. HA HA Piss Off! – Bread & Beast
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