I enjoyed the meal at Jiangnan Cuisine this weekend.
First dish was a whole ‘red-braised/ hong shao’ bass. The sauce, with a little bit of rice wine, soy sauce, sugar, was slightly thickened, savory and pretty good. The bass and the thinly-sliced silken tofu duly soaked up all the sauce. The fish was said to be around 1.3 pounds, and was flaky and worked well with the prep. Perhaps the sauce was slightly on the salty side.
Red-braised pork dish employed a reduced soy sauce and sugar sauce that’s caramelized. The sweet sauce was infused into the jello-like fatty layers of the pork belly. The drawback of the dish was that the belly was of average quality- the lean meat was seemingly refrigerated too long and was dry. Stick with the fatty parts for the nice sauce.
The (Shanghai) vegetable rice with salted meat came with chopped bok choy, salted pork. One may argue that its not as oily as it traditionally may be, but I welcomed the light touch.
Overall, I quite enjoyed their skills in making the Wuxi style reduction sauces. Would love to hear feedback on other areas of the menu, especially the Wuxi/ Jiangnan/ Shanghai specialties
Dining room was 70% full when we got in at noon, and the restaurant was full with a couple of parties waiting outside when we finished.
