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| - YAY for another Asian eatery in the 'Burgh! While I wasn't thrilled with my meal here, I fully acknowledge that a restaurant needs ample time to feel out its kinks and fine tune to become the best possible version of itself, so I hope to be able to upgrade this review at a later date...a much later date. However, any extra competition in the market for this cuisine makes me too excited to wait to try it, and Rose Tea Cafe could certainly stand to get knocked out of their comfort zone.
The effort was certainly there--the dining room was sleekly adorned, if crowded (during our Saturday lunch, they set out a plastic folding table in the center aisle to accommodate a party), and the staff was warm and welcoming, both unusual qualities for an authentic Asian restaurant. It would be nice though if the servers could educate themselves about menu items, because they found it difficult to answer most of our questions about the dishes and had to run back and forth between our table and the kitchen to help us figure things out. My unfamiliarity with the nuances of typical Taiwanese cooking and traditional dishes, coupled with my extreme pickiness, er, I mean, measured selectivity, meant I had a lot of questions. Sorry not sorry. Also, any restaurant that designates dishes at market price should at the very least anticipate questions about that.
We settled on the STEAMED MINI SOUP PORK BUNS (A16), MARINATED HOT PEPPER (A21), BE FENG TONG SHRIMP (E6), CHICKEN WITH BASIL IN CASSEROLE (C1), MINCED PORK WITH CHIVE STEM IN BLACK BEAN SAUCE (P17), and SAUTEED KING MUSHROOM WITH SALT & PEPPER (V11). My friend had wanted to try the PUMPKIN WITH DUCK YOLK (V12), but it was priced at a "SP" of $17.50, which, unless those preserved duck eggs are from organic, pasture-raised ducks and the pumpkin is one of Dan Barber's artisanally-bred Blue Hill Farms mini-squash, is pretty far-out ridiculous. And I wanted my favorite water spinach, or SAUTEED SEASONAL CHINESE VEGETABLE (V6), but not enough to fork over $14.50 for something that costs $2 to make. Market prices. They're the best.
All dishes tasted passable but not great--a general lack of flavor made it difficult for the food to wow us. A slightly heavier hand with salt would have been appreciated in general. You could taste that the pork buns COULD have been nice and porky...except that they were bland. This was particularly sad because the aroma was there, and they even brought out a small dish of black vinegar with shredded ginger to dip them in, but the lack of seasoning just killed it. This was also true of the peppers, which seemed like they had been marinated in oil with absolutely no salt (they tasted purely of heat), and the chicken with basil, which was pleasantly saucy but had no taste of basil. The meat was also not the best quality--extra gristly. Sad. The pork dish overwhelmed with an aroma of oyster sauce more than anything else, which wasn't a BAD thing, except that we were hoping for the black bean taste as the name enticed, which really got shoved to the side.
However, my single greatest letdown was the mushroom dish, my own choice off the menu, which came out deep-fried. Perhaps this was partially my fault--perhaps this dish is always deep-fried and, being a novice to Taiwanese food, I otherwise would have expected this obvious fact or should have asked for yet another clarification on. But, as it stands, I saw "sautéed" on the menu, and I didn't question that they would be simply wok-fried naked, as I expected. They were rock-hard and remained largely untouched by our table. My bad, guys. I did not try the shrimp, as they which were similarly deep-fried, and I was feeling frier-jaded after my mushroom fail, but my 2 out of 3 of my companions seemed to enjoy them (my fiance just informed me that he found them lackluster). They were nicely sized at least and came adorned with a sort of dry rub coated breading.
So yeah, not my best work, and it may be a while before I work up the will to return to this establishment again. However, with the super large menu and the warm, Mandarin-speaking staff, I remain hopefully for vast improvement. I'm rooting for you, Cafe' 33. Just one question though--what's with the apostrophe?
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