It's in chinatown, but not a chinese restaurant... per se.
My friend took me here for my birthday, she had heard about it, told me it was a new asian fusion place. The place looks very trendy, and the bathrooms are clean, definitely not a chinese restaurant lol.
I found the menu to be limited. It's mostly a drinking menu with some food options. Come to think of it, yeah I would come back for a drink, to eat not so much. The place is full of ambiance but the food is lacking.
I don't know what to say about this place, asian dish done western style? by the way that's code for watered down and plated nicely.
The popcorn chicken we ordered were very nice, crispy and tender. It was a nice appetizer.
The nappa cabbage confit, were sprinkled with salt and fried onions. This too was a very nice dish, although once you ate through the first layer, the rest of the cabbage was bland since they only salted the top.
The Hoi tod (which is a mussel crispy pan cake from thailand) was puny and not crispy. This was a total miss, I understand they were putting a spin on it but, it lacked all the elements that made a hoi tod good. Anytime you have something eggy and soggy instead of crispy that's a miss.
The beef short ribs, looked good, but they were not fall off the bone, and too salty.
The eggplant although it looked well seasoned with some dark sauce, turned out bland.
The mapo tofu was also bland.
The three things I liked most were the popcorn shrimps, the crispy chicken skins, and the orange ice cream. the chicken skins were super crispy and tasted awesome.
For dessert we ordered orange ice cream, and the waitress insisted we order a sweet xiaolong bao, a sweet dumpling. Just from the description I thought it was weird but we just went with it since she kept suggesting.
The dumpling was a bit weird, a sweet filling inside a dumpling is like eating rice with chocolate sauce... not good. You will never see this in a real chinese restaurant, it's just not done, not because people haven't thought of it but because the dumpling texture is just not right with something sweet, it's just mushy and sweet, one note, no symphony here.
The ice cream was another story, it had very nice orange flavor and not tangy at all. Beneath the ice cream there were some caramelized ginger slivers which added another dimension. It was nice and refreshing, perfect.
Not exactly east meets west, more lost at sea and adrift in confusion...