Warning: This will be long!
What a great evening, and a great meal! I really enjoyed this casual but modern upscale Chinese American food fest. If you know the space, all the steel counter tables are pushed together to form a big seating table that fits 12. You are sitting on the counter stools, so beware if you need back support.
The evening was 2.5 hours for 3 dim sum bites, and 3 “main course” dishes, paid with white rice and a tasty umami heavy broth, and dessert at the end.
Guests received a lovely note from the chef and the menu on the back.
I do wish he wrote more info on the dishes themselves. They were complex and had multiple components, and I often missed parts of the explanation. Chef Laurence talked about this meal not just re-imagining some of his favorite dishes, but that is an ode to eating Cantonese style too, which I definitely relate to. So guests received, fork, knife and chopsticks and you eat them however you want.
Delicious lobster “toast” with lobster mayo and green scallion sauce
This is a take in shrimp “toast” at dim sum. The toast is made from a thin layer of pan fried fried lobster paste. Not a dim sum dish I ate a lot, but this luxurious version was so delicious. Fantastic lobster flavor.
Lo Bak Go (daikon radish cake) topped with XO napa and fried quail leg with black garlic hoisin sauce. Where the dim sum dish has everything steamed into the cake and then sliced and pan fried, this was made with daikon radish only that made it soft and more delicate, but crisped on top. The napa could be scooped up and dipped into the hoisin sauce. Quail was nicely crispy. Loved this take
Deconstructed shumai with caviar. This was the one dish the chef conceded didn’t quite hit the mark. While the flavors were there, the texture didn’t come out as he hoped. I think he hoped the shrimp and the pork would have rolled together or stuck together, but they didn’t. You got almost like two rillettes, one of pork and a center one of shrimp. The pork, without the shrimp, was too dense. Again the flavors definitely was shumai, but the technique for blending the two needs more work.
Rice was “chicken” rice, but it could have used more chicken fat. What was in the broth was not clear, but it tasted like there was a lot of collagen, perhaps chicken bones base, and possibly conpoy or other seafood used in Cantonese cooking and soups. You can get refills on rice and soup for the next 3 courses.
Crisped chicken thigh with homemade oyster sauce, shiitake mushrooms and greens mixed with caramelized onions. The sauce was made with local Duxbury oysters. Nice crunch to the thighs, and with the oyster sauce and mushrooms, this was another good umami rich dish. Ate well with rice.
Award maybe for prettiest dish. “Pickled cabbage fish”, which is actually a classic Sichuan dish. This is halibut with homemade pickled greens, and a little extra chili zip in the broth. I wish we had a spoon to take up more of that broth. Really solid dish and only one that isn’t true Cantonese. His fine dining roots really come through in how this was plated and presented. It was beautiful.
Black bean steak with a red pepper “ketchup/jam” (no tomato; he just called it a condiment). With bok choy greens on the side. The black bean sauce itself was tasty and probably didn’t need the extra condiment, but the pepper paste was nice as an alternative. I tried with both the black bean sauce and the paste and it was a little too much competing there. Black beans are powerful!
And the dish that surprised me the most, in a good way. Persimmons (one of my favorites, and apparently the chef’s too) was turned into a delicious not too sweet dessert. Spiced honey persimmons were offered besides a soy milk cake and a mousse. I forgot if the mousse had persimmon too. There were almost crumblies. One of the best desserts I’ve had in a while. The soymilk cake was literally like taking fresh soymilk in a moist cake form. Really strong, good soymilk taste. It was subtle enough to let the persimmon shine. The candied shards, the crispies, the mousse all lended to this amazing play on just enough sweetness and all these different textures. Loved it!
Showing off the pretty centerpiece from a local flower shop. Gorgeous, huge chrysanthemum blossoms.
Chef Laurence came out and sat with the guests still there and chatted with us and shared some of those thoughts on the menu, his concept and how things went tonight. Really gracious and super chill. He said these dishes have been in the works for about 5 years!
I was definitely full, and it’s a fun night to dine at one big table with everyone. Would highly recommend trying if you want a different sort of tasting menu. Love that he supports and sources from local vendors.
Some minor nitpicky things: if you know the space, the bathroom is through the small kitchen. I felt bad when I had to cut through the chefs working to get there (and it’s a long night).
I was fine sitting right by the door, but two other people thought it was chilly. Probably because the seating area is not far from the entrance.
