Text 1110, 120 rader
Skriven 2013-05-31 21:32:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: resto hype 632
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I'd hard lots about Mission Chinese, of course in the
overwhelmingly dirty and malodorous Mission District of San
Francisco. This Danny something, Korean American kid, is
supposed to be one of the great culinary minds of the 21st
century, making his name on such shockers as kung pao pastrami
and sea-urchin custard (a ripoff on some dish served in Japan,
encountered by me in Singapore). I went to see what the big
deal was about. My first visit was at late lunchtime on a
Saturday; I hoped the A-team might have arrived before the
dinner rush. Probably not.

Chongqing chicken wings - explosive chili, crispy beef tripe -
the main flavors were szechwan pepper and cumin, with which,
in addition to sugar and salt, the wings were dusted after being
deep-fried to an overcooked crunch. About two cups of hot peppers
were strewn over, which did not impart much character to the dish,
though they were impressive-looking. These I eventually took back
to the East Bay in a takeout container. The tripe, in thin strips,
tasted like tripetato chips, which was good, quite a bit more
interesting than the wings. C+, the plus for the tripe.

Thrice cooked bacon - Shanghai rice cakes, bitter melon, tofu
skin, chili oil - this was really salty, and the bacon tasted
like supermarket bacon. I used to make bacon more or less this
way, decades before, only I had the good sense to poach it first.
I can't think what the three cookings referred to - so far as I
can tell, there was only one, a stir-fry. The rice cakes were
appropriately chewy and kind of nice. There wasn't enough bitter
melon (which had been multiply cooked and way too mild) or tofu
skin. Heat level somewhere between wimpy and modest. C+.

Despite this barely passing meal, I invited a bunch of friends,
two vegetarians and two omnivores, to test it out half a week
later at dinnertime.

At dinner you sign up on a sheet outside (which speaks for how
popular the place is), and they call you eventually. I was first
of our group, and my friend Fish's wife showed up maybe 15 later,
so I put in. Rod and Sheri were next, and finally, exactly as
they called our name, Fish showed up. Group of 5, they have only
tables for 2 or 4 but a couple long tables in the middle of the
room, and we shared one of those with a 4-top.

Most of the appies are sort of vegetarian (some may have fish
sauce or shrimp paste, but I didn't point that out to my
friends).

Beer brined Sichuan pickles - salt pickled cabbage, cucumber,
roasted peanut, fresh coriander, chili oil - a pretty nice
though mishmoshy dish, somewhat spicy, B.

Black vinegar peanuts - black vinegar, smoked garlic, anise,
fennel - whole cloves of not-very-smoked garlic made this dish
more interesting. The peanuts were halfway between roast and
boiled in texture and had taken on an intriguing sour anisey
flavor. B+.

Smashed cucumbers in garlic sauce - salted chili, sesame paste,
fresh coriander - surprisingly nice. As you know I hate fresh
cucumbers but love pickled ones. These came in a white creamy
sauce that was weird but good. B.

Chili pickled long beans - daikon, carrot, fermented chili -
each of the vegetables had been pickled separately and had its
own flavor; I particularly favored the cumin-scented carrot
sticks. B+.

Tiki pork belly - soy caramel, mandarin orange, pickled pineapple,
shaved coconut, macadamia nuts - surprisingly, my carnivore
colleagues didn't eat much of this, which I thought irresistible,
the skin both crackling and gooey, the meat quite like braised
pork shoulder from my childhood. Pickled pineapple was a big
surprise as incredibly aggressively sour, obviously meant to cut
the grease, which I didn't think necessary. The other ingredients
were sort of supernumerary. A-, but I got the feeling that the
others would have given it a C at best.

Mains.

Ma po tofu - pork shoulder, doubanjiang, chili paste - the reviews
say that there are vast hunks of fatty pork in here, so I was
looking forward to some decadence. The normal Szechwanese dish has
fine-minced meat and not very much of it. Alas, what came was much
more like the standard than what the reviews led me to hope for.
The dish was incredibly salty and incredibly overstudded with
lightly crunched szechwan peppercorns, so it was not so much hot as
annoying. The slightly too big chunks of pretty fresh (it's not
supposed to be fresh but rather on the sour and old side) tofu
offered a welcome blandness. No sesame oil, which I always thought
a necessary element of the dish. C.

Thrice cooked bacon in the vegetarian version - I'd hoped that the
bacon (mediocre, see above) would just be swapped out with some
more tofu skin. In fact, it had been swapped out with nothing at
all. The smokiness was provided by a dash of smoke seasoning. The
whole was a mess of greasified rice cakes with black beans and
scallions. There was a dearth of tofu skin and no bitter melon at
all this time around. Disappointing, though the veggies, who hadn't
encountered the real thing, liked it. I give a C- tops, they gave
it close to an A, maybe a B+.

Salt cod fried rice - mackerel confit, chinese sausage, lettuce,
egg - standard filler. Luckily, they seem to have forgotten
the lettuce. B-, because of the Chinese sausage, of which there
should have been more.

Mongolian long beans - Xinjiang spices, horseradish, chili oil -
way salty and otherwise tasteless. The appetizer long beans were
so much better. C-.

Egg egg noodles - soft hen egg, ginger, scallion, cilantro - were
bland but not bad. C.

We had a bunch of IPAs in a can, I didn't bother noting the name,
but it was floral but relatively unbitter. $25 a persom, not too
costly but I just wish the food had been a bit better.

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