Josh recently invited Thanan and me to his new favorite restaurant of the moment: Cafe China. New on the scene for a few months, the restaurant recently received two pretty stars from The New York Times, and seemed to be bustling with customers as a result. Luckily, we did not have to wait too long on a Thursday night to begin our Sichuan feast.
We started with their five spice beef dish, which was served cold. A large lump of thinly sliced poached beef was served alongside a small dish of dry red spices.
The dish was nothing as we had expected (though who knows what we were expecting), and it was fine. Appropriately meaty. A bit salty (maybe good with beer?) and benefited greatly from the spice to add any bit of interest to the dish. Although none of us rather loved it, we all just kept eating it because it was there, because it was salty, and...because it was there.
Josh struggling with the dumplings under Thanan's watchful eye. |
The chili oil was fantastically savory, but slightly sweet and just pure love on my tongue. Coupled with the perfectly thin wrapper and the juicy pork, I could be happy eating this for days.
There was one healthy dish of vegetables in the form of eggplant in garlic sauce. Tender chunks of eggplant were drowned in thick garlic sauce, the whole dish absolutely mushy in texture but had good flavor.
Cafe China
13 E 37th St
New York, NY
This is what's great about food blogs. I would totally order anything called "five spice beef", but now I know not to. The chicken and lamb, though, look amaaaaaazing.
ReplyDeletethat purple is so beautiful :)
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