Monday, January 22
Pan the Wok
Written for Outlook City Limits: The perverse idea - that writing a review is most fun when you're trashing something - is truest about food and restaurants. It is easy to catch amateur reviewers - like me - struggling with the scarcity of synonyms for 'delicious,' and ultimately trotting out the shame-face squad: Tasty! Delectable! Scrumptious! Yum! To which the reader says: Yuck.
Bad experiences inspire better prose, and to that extent, this was one of my favourite experiences reviewing a restaurant. I wasnt being vicious. The place brought down its shutters permanently a month later.
Its possible that when Its All Greek To Me vacated his upper-story location, they left behind the tables, and that was the reason why Mr Tandon opened China Xpress. The name of the new restaurant is doubly deceptive: there is nothing express about it, since one fretful gentleman acts as everything from maitre’de to busboy. In between appetizers you’ll have time to enjoy the forgotten Govinda music videos playing in your face, and smoking is allowed, so between courses you’ll have time for a cigarette or several.
There is also nothing particularly Chinese about it. The menu is largely Japanese or Indochinese, sometimes indigenized to the Delhi taste. The Thai Laksa Lemak soup brims with the warm tastes of coconut milk and lemon grass. The Miso Soup is light and true to the flavour of the bean, but the tofu floats around in it like an afterthought. The soups are worth stopping in for if soup is all you’re having.
Salmon and prawn tempura sushi arrive looking credible but are really just big mouthfuls of rice. This is what people who don’t like sushi think it tastes like. The satay is the best you’ll find at that price, and that’s clearly the accolade that China Xpress has its eyes on in general. But although Low prices are great, they don’t soften the blow when your sizzler arrives not sizzling or even so much as gently exhaling.
The other main courses are all Platters, which means you get your entrée with a dollop of kimchi (gaajar-pyaaz vala) and a spring roll (until the kitchen runs out of them). The Vegetable Almond Platter was true to its word and tasted like almonds chopped into a glum cauliflower broth. The entrée recommended by the house, the Sliced Lamb Chilly Platter, fails to make boiled rice taste much better than rice does on its own.
Lame entrées are mere disappointments. But it is a truly human and heart-breaking moment when the only other patrons at a Chinese restaurant leave in a huff because the kitchen has run out of noodles. I guess the old restaurant didn’t leave any behind.
Bad experiences inspire better prose, and to that extent, this was one of my favourite experiences reviewing a restaurant. I wasnt being vicious. The place brought down its shutters permanently a month later.
Its possible that when Its All Greek To Me vacated his upper-story location, they left behind the tables, and that was the reason why Mr Tandon opened China Xpress. The name of the new restaurant is doubly deceptive: there is nothing express about it, since one fretful gentleman acts as everything from maitre’de to busboy. In between appetizers you’ll have time to enjoy the forgotten Govinda music videos playing in your face, and smoking is allowed, so between courses you’ll have time for a cigarette or several.
There is also nothing particularly Chinese about it. The menu is largely Japanese or Indochinese, sometimes indigenized to the Delhi taste. The Thai Laksa Lemak soup brims with the warm tastes of coconut milk and lemon grass. The Miso Soup is light and true to the flavour of the bean, but the tofu floats around in it like an afterthought. The soups are worth stopping in for if soup is all you’re having.
Salmon and prawn tempura sushi arrive looking credible but are really just big mouthfuls of rice. This is what people who don’t like sushi think it tastes like. The satay is the best you’ll find at that price, and that’s clearly the accolade that China Xpress has its eyes on in general. But although Low prices are great, they don’t soften the blow when your sizzler arrives not sizzling or even so much as gently exhaling.
The other main courses are all Platters, which means you get your entrée with a dollop of kimchi (gaajar-pyaaz vala) and a spring roll (until the kitchen runs out of them). The Vegetable Almond Platter was true to its word and tasted like almonds chopped into a glum cauliflower broth. The entrée recommended by the house, the Sliced Lamb Chilly Platter, fails to make boiled rice taste much better than rice does on its own.
Lame entrées are mere disappointments. But it is a truly human and heart-breaking moment when the only other patrons at a Chinese restaurant leave in a huff because the kitchen has run out of noodles. I guess the old restaurant didn’t leave any behind.
