Category — Restaurant News & Reviews

Me, minus my Chinese New Year 2010 "good luck" oyster

Resolutions already shot? Still haven’t mastered the guitar? And…oh my goodness…. you’ve actually gained weight?

Here comes a second chance.

Chinese New Year begins Feb. 3  and you can start all over. Deliciously.

Most of you reading probably know that the Chinese assign auspicious qualities to many different foods. At your New Year feast, be sure to include pot stickers, which are shaped like gold ingots and therefore represent prosperity (ditto for kumquats and oranges, which have a “golden” hue.) Noodles signify long life, oysters represent good luck, and items that remain whole — fish, chicken, duck — usher in wholeness, oneness (fish is the best choice here because the Chinese word for fish is similar to the word for “abundance.” So double whammy.)

And just in case one of your Chinese New Year resolutions is to begin exploring this great cuisine, I’ve polled the experts and assembled a few basic principles for you.

Balance, texture and presentation are the building blocks of Chinese cuisine. Balance means hitting notes of sweet, sour, salty, and yes, umami (the word is Japanese, but the concept is universal.) That means you want to pair sweet hoisin with something salty like soy sauce.

For texture, you want to feature pliant tofu with crisp cabbage. ”Good Chinese food always has smooth and crunchy,” East-West master Ming Tsai told me. [Read more →]

photo by Alessandro Scotti

Or is it? Western chefs and even some Japanese are snarking at the notion after the Michelin guides bestowed three stars on 12 restaurants in the Kansai-area, more than any other place in the world.

But even more interesting is the response of many Japanese chefs: that loyal customers have sustained them. Why would they want a bunch of crass foreigners coming to their restaurants?  See today’s Wall Street Journal for more.

Thomas Zeleninsky

Love the Times piece this week about the eggplant dishes of the Mediterranean. Cinnamon and coriander flavor the Turkish turlu, while the parsley and oregano of Greek briam takes the nose just slightly adrift from the thyme-scented ratatouille. But even more fun is the piece about Bab al Yemen — the gate of Yemen — a restaurant in Brooklyn whose food transports you to the Arabian peninsula.