Tommy Toy's in the Financial District in San Francisco, CA
http://www.tommytoys.com/
Another day, another Dine About Town menu. This time I went to Tommy Toy's with a couple of girlfriends. It's another fancy Chinese restaurant, kind of like Wing Lei. Kuau and I had been excited to come here after reading about it in Zagat (which gave it a 24 for food). The restaurant itself is right across the street from the Transamerica building. That building has nothing to do with Tommy Toy's, of course. In fact, I took this picture later in the evening, after we'd left. I just like this picture.
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The restaurant decor was very Chinese again. I mentioned in my Wing Lei post about how sometimes the Chinese decor in restaurants seems a little overdone, like they're trying to convince you, No seriously! we're Chinese! This edged on that but it didn't bother me, because I actually thought it looked very authentic. On the way out we also noticed a wall of pictures of Tommy Toy with various celebrities ranging from the former Prime Minister of Singapore to Chuck Norris, which I thought was cute. (Unfortunately Tommy Toy himself died in 2008.)
The Dine About Town dinners are 3 courses, usually an appetizer, entree, and dessert. Tommy Toy instead had 4 courses, with two appetizers and two smaller entrees, and no dessert.
We started out with this barbecued duck salad with jellyfish in a ginger vinaigrette dressing. Re-reading the menu now, I'm like, oh, jellyfish! That's what that was! (The waiter did briefly introduce each course, but I guess I could've used the more detailed version.) Anyway, it was good, but not remarkable really. There were a few too many fried wonton strips, and not enough of the extremely thin slivers of duck. The dressing and jellyfish were really good though.
The second course was a lobster tomato bisque "crowned with puff pastry." This dish was pretty awesome. As you can see, there was a giant puff pastry on top, and when they served it they used my spoon to poke a big hole in it so that I could see what was inside. The first time I dipped my spoon into the soup, I came up with like 4 big chunks of lobster claw. The bisque itself wasn't creamy, it was closer to a water- or tomato-based soup, but it was really good. The puff pastry on top was delicious -- it was easy to dump all of it into the bowl itself and let it soak up the soup. Overall this was a great dish. My only tiny complaint is that it was served ridiculously hot, but the waiter did warn us of that and encouraged us to take our time. (But if Kuau had been there, it probably would've taken ten minutes just for him to be able to try it.)
The third course was the first entree: tiger prawns, filet of sole, and scallops sauteed in kung pao sauce with roasted peanuts. Despite the melange of seafood, this dish was pretty blah to me. It didn't have a lot of sauce, which I suppose is good in that it wasn't like a typical kung pao dish you might get at the cheap corner Chinese place. But it didn't have a lot of taste either. At least the seafood was all cooked very well, though. The fish in particular had a fried outside, but was really tender inside; and the scallops were cooked the perfect amount. This was also served with a side of fried rice, which was just ... regular fried rice.
This was the second entree, medallions of filet mignon in red wine and balsamic vinegar reduction. This dish was SO GOOD. The filet was incredibly soft and cooked to perfection. The sauce was delicious and a little bit of it soaked into the fried rice that it was served on top of (so even though it was the exact same fried rice as had been served with the kung pao dish, it managed to taste much better this time around). That was really all there was to this simple dish (okay obviously there are asparagus spears on there. The asparagus was fine), but this managed to by far be my favorite dish of the night. And it was competing with soup-soaked bread, which is also one of my favorite things to eat of all time, so that is a large compliment.
Since the menu didn't come with dessert, we also ordered green tea ice cream, which was green tea ice cream. I've had better, but I've had worse as well.
The meal made me want to come back and try out one of their more in-depth menus, so I guess Dine About Town was a success as far as that goes. I would say this place and Wing Lei are pretty comparable as far as nice Chinese restaurants in America. It's nice to know that those exist.
January 23, 2010 - Tommy Toy's
January 21, 2010 - Le Colonial
Le Colonial in Union Square in San Francisco, CA
http://www.lecolonialsf.com
Dine About Town, SF's version of Restaurant Week, is on and I'm all about it. In an attempt to keep track of the three meals I've scheduled in as many days, I'm doing our blog's first-ever review-on-the-night-of!
Tonight I went to Le Colonial with some people from my research program. It's on a random street right next to Union Square. I didn't actually pay attention to the outside when we got there (reason: my heels were already killing me, and I'd only walked a total of 3 blocks in them. This is why heels in San Francisco are stupid). The inside was nice though -- it looked like an old (colonial, I'd imagine) house, with a little covered outside area with chairs that probably would've been a great lounge area if it hadn't been raining. Inside it looked kind of like a casual but nice hotel -- big open room, lots of wicker chairs, busy. It felt like the kind of place I'd like to walk into after a nice day on the beach. They accommodated our one extra guest without a problem, which was great.
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The first course was pork belly with a savory caramel sauce, parsnip puree, white truffle oil, Hosui pear, pickled bok choy and quail egg. Um, yum yum yum yum yum yum and yum. Actually, all the appetizers sounded good (they also had pho and papaya salad options) but I couldn't say no to any of those ingredients, let alone all of them together. It was super delicious -- my favorite part was the quail egg, which was somewhere between soft and hard boiled to perfection. There was a very generous portion of pork belly, and all of the fruits/vegetables were pickled deliciously. In fact, my only complaint would be that the caramel sauce slightly drowned out the fruits and vegetables. And I am not really a huge veggie fan, so I'm telling you these vegetables were really worth something.
For the main course, I chose the coconut-marinated pork chop with "onion cut" rice (not on the online menu, hence the much vaguer description). My pork chop serving was gigantic! (One of my friends thought his was quite a bit smaller, but he still had plenty of food.) The pork chop was really good -- it verged on dry, but managed to stay just this side of moist, and was flavorful. Its sauce was absolutely delicious, though I wish there had been more of it. Somehow the rice was remarkable. I don't know how you make rice interesting, but this was almost like fried rice without any of the unpleasant fried-ness. And once again, the pickled veggies on the side were delicious. I guess the secret to my vegetable heart is to pickle things. (Except pickles. I don't particularly like pickles.)
If you're thinking of judging me for ordering a pork appetizer and a pork entree, by the way, I'll have you know that half of our table did the same thing. The other options were a vegetable curry and lemongrass chicken. I tried my friend's lemongrass chicken and it was super moist and flavorful, but it didn't look like she had a lot of side stuff to go with it. In fact, perhaps that's a small point about the pork too: could've used more side stuff. The portion of rice was actually really small, particularly compared to the giant pork chop cut. Anyway, the menu sounded so delicious that I literally could've had any combination of the offered appetizer and entree and probably been happy.
There was only one dessert option, the chocolate flourless cake. I actually wasn't overly impressed by this, although I thought it was a nice touch to have three sauces on the side (cream, chocolate, and strawberry). The whipped cream was also very good. But overall, it was a decent chocolate cake but didn't stand out to me, and I kind of wished it were warm (maybe I was kind of wishing it were a molten chocolate cake or a souffle or something, though).
Afterwards, we briefly went upstairs because we'd heard live music coming from up there. And it was, indeed, live music. It was a very cool bar area with comfy couches, again reminding me a little bit of a hotel bar in the Caribbean or something. There was some pretty good live jazz going on with a singer, and people were actually dancing, which was fun to watch, including this guy who reminded us of Dick Tracy complete with a gangster-style suit and fedora/cowboy hat. Also, apparently, this man and woman were talking, and then the woman slapped him in the face and then went to the bathroom in tears! and the man stood there chagrined for a moment and then kind of shrugged and went on his way! and then she left like 5 minutes later alone, wiping the tears from her face! I have to say "apparently" because I only saw her leave, but one of our friends saw the rest of it. So -- good people-watching is possible here too.
Overall, I was very pleased with our choice to come here and we each escaped for about $50-$60 per person, which is totally not bad. True, if you think about a $35 prix fixe menu erupting into $60, it kind of makes you cringe, but overall their prices are very high so I'm still okay with getting to try their menu for this price. The portions were very generous but I didn't think it was disproportionate the way it sounded like it was at Chef Vola, and I really liked the atmosphere of the restaurant and the upstairs bar.
Reflections on pizza
Since coming to the Bay Area, I have come to appreciate good pizza in a new way. Growing up in New Jersey with Attilio's only minutes away, I never thought of pizza as a big deal -- good pizza was available everywhere you looked. There was ne'er a gummy cheese nor a crappy crust to be found. But now that I've lived in San Francisco for six months, I know the truth. Bad pizza is out there.
This is my story.
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I was first introduced to bad pizza on a rainy day shortly after getting to San Francisco, walking home from the bank. I'd walked up a long hill and was tired and hungry and there was no food in the house, so I decided to stop by a random pizza shop on the way home. And there, at North Beach Pizza, I discovered one of the worst pizzas I have ever eaten in my life, with congealed-then-reheated cheese and scant amounts of tasteless sauce. Gah! I'm not sure what style pizza this is impersonating, unless that style is "bad."
Luckily, there are good pizzas in San Francisco, even in the very same neighborhood. I judged it harshly the first time I went, but I've grown fonder of Escape from New York pizza, partially because it's a block away from my house and it makes for a super-easy meal, and partially because it's not as expensive as I'd originally thought ($3-$5 a slice. I'll take it, here in SF at least). This is (I'm fairly certain) New York-style pizza and it's not bad -- thin, crispy crust, tasty toppings, appropriate amount of sauce. My only caveat is that they're famous for their potato pizza, and I am not a fan of that at all. The potato slices are super-greasy, the lack of red sauce is accompanied by a lack of flavor, and somehow, I kid you not, the whole garlic cloves are tasteless. How do you make whole garlic cloves tasteless? How?! Anyway, I would stick to mushroom or sausage or whatever normal toppings you'd get on a red pizza. Heck, the cheese slice I had was better than the potato.
The only other recent New York-style pizza I've had was from Di Fara in the freaking middle of nowhere in Brooklyn. There is another, more-famous pizza place in Brooklyn, Grimaldi's, and Di Fara is supposed to be similar or better. Di Fara is also one of those hole in the walls where you gather round and wait for an hour (at least; my brother's friend waited for two, apparently we got lucky) and the old dude who's been making pizza since before your mom was born makes each individual pizza all by himself. And there are only 8 mismatched chairs and a couple of tables that look like someone found them in a basement and you have to stalk people to get a place to sit and yet everybody still says it's the greatest spot on the planet. If it weren't for those conditions, I actually might agree. I thought the Di Fara pizza we had was the best that I will mention in this blog. He snips some fresh basil onto it, the crust is not thin but not thick, the sauce is delicious, the sausage is delicious, it literally just came out of the oven and into your hot little hands, there's just a little bit of char on it to make it taste authentic. Wow, my mouth just watered and I'm not even remotely hungry. So yeah. To me, New York-style pizza wins as far as style, and Di Fara wins as far as this blog.
Until I got here the only Chicago-style pizza I had ever had was from Pizzeria Uno, so I don't claim to be an expert at all. I have, however, been privy to the Chicago-style pizza craze that goes on here (I really can't think of a single independent Chicago-style pizza place on the East Coast, though I'm sure they exist. So, perhaps it's only a comparative craze), having been to Patxi's, Little Star, and Zachary's. By the way, I had erroneously thought that Chicago-style just meant "deep dish," but the term goes way beyond that. I don't know the technical terms for this, but in Chicago-style pizza, it seems like all of the toppings and sauce and cheese are piled into a pie-crust. All three of these places are pretty expensive considering it's just a pizza (usually over $20/pie). But to be fair, I got a large Little Star pizza just for myself and it gave me 5 meals.
Let me describe the Zachary's phenomenon to those of you who did not grow up in the Berkeley area (or are not intimately involved with someone from the Berkeley area). Zachary's is a freaking cult. Like half of Kuau's friends have worked there at some point in their lives. A quarter of them probably work there now. And they are rabid, rabid fans of this pizza. While Kuau and I were living in Boston, he came back to Berkeley to visit and was such a big fan of this pizza that he traveled to Target, bought a cooler, got a half-baked Zachary's pizza, and brought it back on the plane for me to eat.
And to Zachary's I say, eh. It's pretty good. To be fair, the pie that Kuau brought back tasted very good, probably because all of the looooove that went into it. But since then I have been back to Zachary's and I think it's ... fine, but I don't want to take it back on a plane to introduce it to my family or anything like that.
Patxi's is very similar to Zachary's, except our pizza was strangely watery by the end, as in there was a little puddle of oil-water on the serving dish. It didn't really affect the taste, but it made for a slightly less pleasant dining experience. Kuau still thought it was very comparable and was willing to give up trips to Berkeley/Zachary's, though, saying this would soothe his craving.
But poor Kuau has not yet been to Little Star. About Little Star I could wax poetic. I can't pinpoint the difference yet. But I will come back to you soon, Little Star, don't you worry. ... If you can't tell, Little Star is by far my favorite of these three. Like I said, I'm not sure why. Really, all three of them are remarkably similar and have a great crust, generous portions, extremely similar pricing. But something about the pizza I got at Little Star has made my mouth water every time I've thought of it since then. I think it's the sauce. When I got this pizza for myself I literally had it for 5 meals in a row and did not even get remotely sick of it. In fact, I wanted to go buy another one the next day (except for the strangely rock-heavy feeling in my stomach that hadn't let up for five meals ... what a coincidence!).
Lastly, I have to give up a little shout-out for New Haven-style pizza, which I might never have been introduced to if I didn't live in New Haven for four years, because who the f knows anything about New Haven? But those who are in the know usually say that Pepe's is the originator. Of pizza. (Kind of like New Haven also has this ridiculous claim that it invented burgers. Does anybody actually believe this?) There are also shout-outs for Sally's and Modern and a ton of other good pizza places in New Haven, but I haven't been to those recently. Whereas I just had Pepe's thin crust and their famous clams casino pizza.
It wasn't quite as good as I remembered. I did like the clams casino a lot, but it was really salty. Our other red pizza wasn't as salty, so maybe I'll stick to those from now on. Oh, but now I want the clams casino again, so never mind. Anyway, the crust is probably the star at Pepe's, being thin and yet managing to remain super-crispy as it does. Unfortunately, to me, Pepe's is one of those things where the hype is a bit better than the actual product, though the actual product is still really good. And this is so extreme that even my hype -- as in, my imagining the pizza right now -- is making me want to go back, even though I expect to be disappointed again.
Oh, man. After all of this talk, maybe I am hungry after all.
December 23, 2009 - Due Mari
Due Mari in New Brunswick, NJ
http://www.duemarinj.com/index.html
This was actually our second time eating at Due Mari, which is significant because we generally try to not eat at the same place twice. Our first time here, we succeeded by getting a couple pasta courses for the table, and failed by getting a meat or fish dish as an entree. So armed with this knowledge, and seven of our closest friends, nine of us embarked on a holiday dinner that promised to be full of pasta, pasta, and more pasta, and a bit of wine for those willing to wait.
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We started off by letting our friend who knows way more about wine than any 25 year old should pick a bottle of red and another bottle of white for the table. The most peculiar of things proceeded shortly after the wine was picked. One of our waiters promptly brought the bottle of white to the table and poured it for the white drinkers (what can I say, we're an ethnic group). The whites waited for the red to be poured so that we could toast the return of Ellie and the beginning of most people holiday break. Unfortunately, it took about 10 minutes for the red to arrive. And it was from a different waiter. Which tells me a couple things. First, they were smart enough to bring a couple waiters to our large table, and second; they completely forgot about the other bottle of wine. I guess it wouldn't have been a big deal if this was the only gaff in service, but the culmination (which I'm sure you'll get to hear about in more detail) of gaffs ensured that we won't return. Well, unless it's just for a quick pasta snack.
A few couples ordered some antipasti to get the table started. These were all fine. A couple people wanted oysters, so I decided to jump on that bandwagon. I don't remember the types, but the one from Long Island was definitely the best one. In fact, the others weren't that great. I think that is my fault for ordering a Pacific Ocean oyster when there was a Long Island option. To sum it up, the Long Island was good on it's own, and the other two would have been better as shooters with cocktail sauce. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a huge oyster shot fan, but that's usually because I'm walking down some beach area and they are $1 during happy hour. For triple the price I want triple the quality, and with that only the Long Island sufficed.
For our entree's, everyone opted for pasta. I mean it. There were nine of us and not one meat or fish dish was ordered. I guess enough of us had been here before to know better, and that forced everyone else to make the correct decision and order pasta. We pulled a fairly convoluted scheme, where one person from a couple split the pasta tasting menu with another person from another couple, thereby allowing two couples to split a tasting menu but not having to order four menus. I think it overly confused the waiters, and for all I know there were some people ordering five courses and other people ordering one course, so it was hard for them to organize the whole thing correctly. But come on, I'm sure there are restaurant management books out there to deal with this situation. I have a hard time believing that I will ever be a patron with an original request to any type of establishment.
While I'm on the subject, someone at the table doesn't eat beef but wanted the tasting menu, which has a beef course. He asked if it could be substituted, and instead of a simple yes and the options that it could be substituted for, our waiter said that he had to go in the back and ask the chef. Again, really? Nobody has ever asked to sub out a tasting menu dish for dietary reasons before? They couldn't come up with an answer off the top of their head for a large group? So the waiter eventually came back and said that it could be substituted (thanks, the original question wasn't rhetorical at all) for this one other item. Which cost less on the menu. There were actually a couple items that were the same price or cheaper on the menu, but he only had one choice to substitute it with. Compare this with the story that I hopefully wrote about for WD-50, where we wanted to sub something just because we wanted the item. Our waiter promptly suggested which course it most naturally replaces and brought one of us the substituted item and kept the other plate with the planned item.
Eventually (don't get me wrong, if you've been reading these blogs you should be able to tell that I really enjoy long meals, so it's not that I was perturbed that I had to be anywhere, but the spacing between courses was not up to par) our food came out. This was clearly the highlight of the night. Fine, they had an off day with the service, but the gnocchi is absolutely amazing. If I worked in New Brunswick, I would probably stop eating PB&J's altogether and grab a gnocchi side every day. Then I'd bring some home for dinner. All the pasta at Due Mari is made in house, and the gnocchi tastes like it was hand spun (or however you make pasta) only an hour before. And the marinara sauce complements it perfectly, although I do have to push a bunch of tomato chunks off to the side. But they are big and easy to flick away.
In addition to the tasting menu, we ordered a spaghetti with lobster. This was pretty amazing. It came with almost a whole lobster. Okay, it probably came with exactly half a pretty big lobster, because I would never throw an entire lobster into a meal for my patron if I were a chef (note to future people, don't go to my restaurant if you want huge portions. Oh, and I don't want to own a restaurant, so also don't hold your breath). The spaghetti itself was cooked appropriately and it was a very decent portion of food in all. This was a solid dish.
I don't see the tasting menu online, but I'm pretty sure we received cheese ravioli, duck confit agnolotti, pappardelle with short rib ragu, and probably one more dish which was likely the cavatelli with sausage. Usually when I forget a course Ellie reminds me that it was my favorite course. But this time I think she won't be able to do that, because my favorite course by far was the cheese ravioli, as this was almost definitely the best ravioli I have ever had. Yeah, I know, it's weird that cheese would be the star out of duck confit, short rib, and lobster. But hey, I don't make the stuff, I just eat it. Somehow the cheese remained extremely moist. It was like a melted brie texture but the flavor of more closely resembled ricotta, parmesan, and fontina. In fact, it's quite possible that there secret is to stuff ravioli with fontina. Whatever the secret, it's done to perfection.
The short rib was also very good. I still find it strange that wasting short rib by putting it in a sauce can be a good idea, but like most pasta sauces, it successfully takes the flavor of a small amount of meat and disseminates it throughout the whole course. The duck confit was meh and I can't even remember the other course.
Finally, the tasting menu came with a dessert. They were actually very good about letting us swap the dessert. I don't remember the order or the food, but suffice it to say that four desserts were ordered. Two hot desserts and two ice cream desserts. For some reason, we were served one hot and one cold at the same time. The people who received their desserts waited for the other hot and cold to arrive. After literally 20 minutes of trying to flag down any one of our waiters, they were forced to eat there now cool hot dessert and melted ice cream before the other desserts were served. On the plus side, the restaurant rightfully felt bad, so they filled up coffees on the house and brought out a giant tiramisu dessert for the table. This was actually a really good tiramisu, and it was nice to have mostly because I would never order tiramisu if given the choice.
Eventually the check was received and we had a big discussion about the legal consequences of not leaving the stated tip if a menu says parties of x or more will automatically have gratuity added to the check. For what it's worth, I totally understand a restaurant adding gratuity to large parties, because I imagine there are many parties who forget to tip when there are that many people involved, so tacking it onto the check makes sense. The problem is that they added 20% and the service was awful. It was so bad that I would have considered leaving less than 15% under different circumstances. Also, the 20% was added to the wine portion of the tab, which I understand is not customary. We ultimately paid the 20%, wrote a note to management, and I researched the legal implications the next day. It turns out that in NYC, restaurants are legally allowed to add tips to checks where the party is eight or more. However, I do not believe that this means the party is obligated to pay the tip. I'd love some insight on this though.
November 22, 2009 - Wing Lei
Wing Lei at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas, NV
http://www.wynnlasvegas.com/#dining/
We came to Vegas for the first time in November to celebrate Kuau's (30th!) birthday. We stayed at the Wynn, which was awesome in itself, as you might be able to imagine from the joy captured in this photograph.
Of course, as one might imagine from this blog, we also wanted to hit up some of the big foodie restaurants we'd been hearing about. We decided to take advantage of the Wynn by going to one of its restaurants, and somehow (I forget why) Kuau chose Wing Lei.
'Twas not a bad choice, all things considered. I might even call it ... a good choice.
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The restaurant itself was really pretty, although it felt a little faux Chinese to me. By that I mean, there were giant Chinese-looking urns in a Chinese-looking garden visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Nice and all, but it felt a little bit like overkill. Kuau was pretty much convinced of its Chinese-ness because of this ornamental plate, which we never ate off of. (Kuau was highly entertained by the high number of plate changes that we experienced in Hong Kong, and felt this represented it well.) I became a little more comfortable towards the end of our meal when a large group of semi-raucous Chinese people walked in talking loudly and rudely in Cantonese -- just what a real Hong Kong restaurant (serving Peking duck) might be like.
We ordered the Peking duck tasting menu, which has Peking duck served in five different ways. I also ordered the delicious green drink in a martini glass featured in this picture. There were like 5 mixed drinks that all sounded good, and this one was awesome. I don't remember what was in it (Kuau?) ... but rest assured, every mixed drink I had at the Wynn was amazing, so I'd go for them!
Back to the food ... the first course was this traditional Peking duck wrap. I was too shy/slow to catch a picture, but they did the traditional thing where they push the duck out on a little cart, carve it in front of you, and put it into wraps with Hoisin sauce and cucumber and scallions -- all with, like, a couple spoons and a knife. The wraps were really good, and I would say they were even comparable with Quanjude, the super-famous place we had Peking duck in Beijing. The only thing is I wish we had more of it (and I would've sacrificed some of the other courses for more of this one. Don't worry, I'm sure I'll go over it in excruciating detail in the paragraphs to come. That's what we do here).
This is the course I would NOT have sacrificed for ANYTHING. (Not literally.) Unfortunately, this course looks like a pile of crap. However, I can tell you that it was a salad, described on the menu as with "almonds, crisp orange truffle vinaigrette." It was also served inside a crispy shell, kind of like a taco shell you'd get in a taco salads, but way more delicious. (The waitress also broke up the shell and mixed the salad for us.) This was to me the star dish of the evening. It was modern, but still had flavors reminiscent of traditional Chinese cooking, and I felt like the chef actually had a new and awesome vision when he created this course, which is impressive when it's just ... salad. Oh, and it was FREAKING DELICIOUS.
After that the courses seemed much more blah. This, for example, is a soup. Do I remember the taste of this soup? Not particularly, though I'm sure it tasted like chicken broth (er, I mean, duck broth). Do I dream about this soup at night, and savor the memory of its crispy taco shell? Certainly not.
The next course consisted of the final two preparations of duck. The waitress again rolled out the two kinds of duck on a cart, then plated our dishes in front of us (or, behind a creepy Kuau, as this picture might attest), which makes 3 dishes that they plated or modified in front of us (the duck wraps, the salad mixing, and this one). I thought this was a nice touch that added a little formality to the dinner while also making it more fun and interesting for us.
The two preparations of duck were in black bean sauce (left) and with noodles (right). Unfortunately, I found this final course to be pretty darn lackluster. The black bean sauce was okay, but that's also because black bean sauce is always awesome. In fact, I thought it was less flavorful than the Lee Kum Kee stuff from the jar. The noodles were fine, but I didn't think there was anything interesting there. I was also disappointed because this course was so not innovative in any way that I could readily identify. :(
The standard dessert that came with the meal was the strawberry ... thing ... in the right picture. I really don't know how to describe the strawberry thing. I guess it was a mousse? Both desserts were fine, but neither of them made my dessert stomach perk up and tell me that I absolutely had to finish them.
The experience started out awesome, peaked to super-duper awesome, and then fell rapidly to above average. So it certainly came out at above average, perhaps even awesome. Plus, I think it's the only nice, modern Chinese restaurant I've been to here in the US, and I do think that gives it something special.