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2012-05-07
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My department rented out this place one night recently after a conference for a visiting speaker. The other reviews are about the restaurant by day as a noodle shop, but we had 'molecular Chinese tapas,' to be described forthwith. The idea behind 'molecular gastronomy' is to take our scientific knowledge of the physical and chemical properties of food-- particularly, how they change when cooked at different temperatures and for different times and use it in the kitchen to create new and original
The idea behind 'molecular gastronomy' is to take our scientific knowledge of the physical and chemical properties of food-- particularly, how they change when cooked at different temperatures and for different times and use it in the kitchen to create new and original dishes. A lot hinges on the effect and its novelty-- no sense cooking an egg for 37 hours at a very low temperature if the effect is the same as an ordinary egg boiled for 10 minutes on the stove.
I can't remember everything we had, but here's a sample:
First, we started with 'tomatoes two ways': one was a spoonful of a tomato sauce that had been cooked to taste like a bloody Mary. I can't say I saw the appeal, as bloody Marys are my least favorite alcoholic beverages (I'm exaggerating only slightly here) and I don't see how they're made any better by taking the alcohol out. The other tomato was a cherry tomato marinated in vinegar and garlic. It was... subtle? It didn't really *pop*, but that's sort of the feeling I got with this restaurant, they were aiming for low-key.
Then we had an egg on top of some mushroom sauce. That doesn't sound too exciting, but the egg was cooked a really long time and it had a unique texture. It was liquidy-- but not runny-- and it broke up into bits that mingled with the mushroom sauce without becoming completely intermixed with it. I thought it was pretty good.
I will say that they don't let you take your time with these dishes-- I felt rushed to finish.
I'll mention just two more things. We had two bowls of noodles. Or 'noodles' I should say. The first is probably very similar to what gets served at lunch here. There was some thin-ish egg noodles, some greens, and a clear, tasty broth. The second was what could best be described as a gimmick. Everyone got a bowl of hot broth and a syringe (no needles!) of uncooked tofu. Then we squirted the tofu into the broth and it was supposed to cook into noodles. That of course didn't happen-- it just broke apart and became little bits of undercooked fluffy tofu string floating around the broth.
Finally, (and I'm leaving out some stuff like the salmon and spare-ribs), we had some abalone. I found it overcooked and chewy. It was my first time having abalone though-- maybe this is how it always is. I'll say this though: either the abalone here is not very good or abalone everywhere is not very good.
So that was dinner. It was fun and interesting, but not especially tasty or delicious. All on the simple, low-key side-- which is fine-- but then also on the somewhat mediocre side as well. The chef Maureen was very personable, and she explained all the dishes to us. I think this partially exploits a cognitive bias-- if she didn't say 'this egg was cooked for 37 hours to get such-and-such a consistency' then you simply wouldn't notice anything special about the egg. But then again, the point of a restaurant is to make you enjoy your food, whether that involves tricking you into it or not.
题外话/补充资料：
They don't have a liquor license here, but they did let us bring beer & wine. I think I heard that dinner [sans booze] came out to only $300 or $350 a head, but I wasn't involved in the paying, so I don't know for sure.
(以上食记乃用户个人意见 , 并不代表OpenRice之观点。)
张贴