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| - Located in the busy part of Chinatown but it is certainly different from the typical Chinese restaurants. The menu selection consists of a kind short list of fusion Asian dishes which draws inspirations from Chinese, Korean, Thai and a tiny bit of Japanese touch. The dishes here mainly want to illustrate good techniques given the status of both co-owners. For instance, the Pork short rib is sous vide for 15 hours and then grilled very lightly, certainly very tasty. The CSB (Char Siu Bao) is fantastic, instead of steaming the bao, they baked it with "pineapple bao" toppings, so the skins are soft but with crispy and sweet toppings, simply great.
However, the seafood noodles, on the other hand, is kind of a disaster. The seafood is very good, the noodles, on the other hand, is over cooked---- actually, not really overcooked, but just burnt, which gives it a bitter taste. Later on, I learned that they used chitarra noodles and they blanched it then stir-fried it. This technique is fine but requires the chef to have master command of the flames--- too hot, we have burnt noodles like mine, --- too cold, it becomes soggy. Most importantly, this just can't be intentional because it was done in an uneven way: about half is burnt and the other half is not.
In addition, the treatment of my comment is also not up to par. I suggested that it was burnt and the seafood is fine, they took the plate away with about a quarter of the seafood still in it. They came back with just a redone of noodles with no seafood. where did my shrimp and clams go? You don't have to replace the whole thing, but what about the ones you took away?
In addition, the manager/host came to table and explained they blanch the chitarra noodles, which will result in a different flavor, and saying that a new plate might have the same problem. And the new dish was actually fine and I really do think they screwed up the first time. I can tell the difference between intention slightly overcooked and just simply burnt noodles.
The service is top notch, the waiter is very attentive to our needs and requests. Other than the burnt noodle part, it was a great experience.
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