Sunday, February 19, 2006
Where not to go for Chinese Food
As I have promised a few posts back, I finally went to check out the much-praised Chinese restaurant in Dublin's unofficial Chinatown. Our German visitors had spent the whole day in Belfast and came back ready for a good meal, and Lofty and I are always up for a bit of an experiment. So we headed off to the city centre looking for Moore Lane, which on the map looked like a small side street off Parnell. In reality it was a tiny alley leading to the loading bays and back entrances of the shops on Moore Street. The road was full of potholes and there was a strong smell of Asian food in the air. It was dark and the air was damp, as if it should start raining any minute. Walking along the poorly lit road past dark warehouses and boarded up shops, I felt a bit like an extra in a low-budget horror movie. Our friend must have felt the same. Despite repeated reassurances that Dublin is not New York City, her unease was apparent in her every move. Her fear was heightened further by the fact that the address we were looking for was exactly half way between two bigger roads, taking us as far as possible away from the lights of the surrounding shops and pubs and from other people. And by the fact that, when we finally got there, the shutters were drawn and the place was deserted. So here we were, in the dark, in an unknown environment, with no clue of where to go to find some food. So much for restaurant reviews in Totally Dublin. Their information was entirely wrong, which to me has killed their credibility. This is a shame because I found their critiques well written and quite informative -- before I tried to follow their advice that is.Anyway, we opted for a different Chinese restaurant in the area, Yami in a small street off Moore Street. As is to be expected if you search your restaurant by location rather than reputation, the meal was OK, but nothing special. The menu was more like that of your average European takeout than that of a real Chinese restaurant, but I'm sure that had something to do with the fact that they had separate menus for Chinese speakers. We definitely got the tourist version catering to European tastes and eating habits. For example, in China, starters do not really exist. You just order a load of stuff, which is put in the middle of the table and everyone just helps themselves. This menu on the other hand had a clearly distinct starters section. And because we all like little Asian nibblies (although I prefer proper Dim Sum), we decided to live up to the stereotype and have something up front. Ordering starters was a difficult affair, though, because rather than telling us what they had, the waitress waited for us to order something, ran off to the kitchen to ask if they indeed had it and then returned with the verdict, which in most cases was negative. Prawn toast, prawns wrapped in spring roll pastry, radish soup with fish dumplings and the mixed platter were all sold out.
We finally settled for crab and sweetcorn soup, sushi rolls (I know what you're thinking now - Sushi in a Chinese restaurant? - and I can assure you, it wasn't my choice), and a quarter "Peking duck", which was basically crispy duck with pancakes. The soup was very much like the ones you get at the take out: Fake crabmeat and canned corn in a very starchy broth. It wasn't awful, but they went a bit too heavy on the pepper. I didn't try the sushi, which consisted of a plate of very uncaringly assembled California rolls, but was pleasantly surprised to see that they came with a knob of wasabi in the accompanying bowl of soy sauce, albeit without gari. The overall verdict was that they were OK, but I'm not convinced. In fact, I'm not sure that you can even find what I would call good sushi in Dublin. Lofty and I love sushi, but have so far not had any here. No one has yet recommended a good restaurant and we would rather go without than settle for inferior quality. Especially since you can get really nice sushi elsewhere. (I promise a good overview of Japanese places in Munich, when I'm there in March.) But back to our Chinese meal. My crispy duck was cold, but surprisingly flavoursome. It came pre-cut with the usual trimmings - finely shredded cucumber and spring onions, thin pancakes and plum sauce - and was just what the doctor ordered. Yum!
I was also quite happy that my starter arrived last, but my main course was first allowing me to mix and match. Lofty and I both had "Sizzling mixed seafood". He originally wanted the house special chow mein, which is, for lack of a better word, his signature dish. Whenever we eat in a new Asian restaurant, Lofty orders fried noodles. Thus, over the years he has grown into something of a collector of noodle experiences. In fact, I bet Lofty has tried fried noodles in more restaurants across more countries than anyone else; England, the USA, Germany, South Africa, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese and more... the list is long. On the one hand, Lofty really likes noodles of all kinds, but they also are a good gauge for the quality of an eatery. Simple, yet easy to get wrong, fried noodles are a good indicator of a cook's abilities. Lofty has developed a sort of 'noodle scale' on which he judges his food, from 13, which is named after the best ones he has had so far, dish number 13 at our local takeout in Prague, to zero, the worst ones, at the FAS canteen here in Dublin.
Unfortunately for him, Yami had run out of noodles! What does that say about the place on the noodle scale? I dread to think. The seafood was quite nice, though. It really came sizzling hot, in a small pan, overflowing with different colours and shapes. There was crab stick (fake crabmeat found in a lot of Asian food; strangely enough, I quite like it at times), little curled up slices of squid that had intricate patterns cut into them and king prawns, broccoli, bamboo shoots, onions, water chestnuts and two types of Asian mushrooms. The sauce was lightly flavoured with oyster sauce and had a nice, non-sticky consistency. The vegetables were fried to perfection, not too crispy, but far from sloppy and the seafood was lovely. The squid was tender, the shrimp firm. The flavours and textures complemented each other perfectly and the whole dish went really well with the fried rice we had ordered. If you are not looking for authenticity, this dish is as close to really good Chinese food as I have got in Dublin.
Our German friends weren't quite as happy with their dinners as we were, though. One of them had ordered squid in oyster sauce, rather than the mixed seafood, and said that the dish was somewhat lacking. They finished it down to the last bit of onion, though, so it cannot have been that bad. The other dish they were sharing was king prawns kung po, which looked, smelled and tasted lovely. A generous helping of king prawns, stir fried with spring onions, peanuts and two types of chillies and served in a bright red chilli sauce. The sauce had a subtle bite to it, but the spiciness was far from overpowering. The individual flavours were not killed off by a nasty burn on your tongue, as is sometimes the case with chilli dishes. One of our friends struggled a bit, but she did admit to not being a big fan of spicy food. They also regretted having ordered steamed rather than fried rice, although it was probably the better accompaniment for the prawns.
Overall, I would say that dinner at Yami was a good, but not outstanding experience. The food was OK but nothing special, the tea was forgettable and I'm not sure what to make of the fact that the dishes on the Chinese speakers' tables looked decidedly more interesting. I think we'll have to keep searching for that really nice Chinese place in Dublin. Oh well, at least we've learned where not to go for Chinese food.
Christine at 11:42 am
