We have a friend came in from out of town...
...he's a huge fan of Top Chef, and recall Evelyn Garcia is here. So we decided to take him here.
To start, I got Tamarind Arnold Palmer - it has tamarind jarritos, lemon, and oolong tea. The taste is pretty mild, you can tell the Arnold Palmer part, but with a little bit of flavoring.
It was recommended to us to order 5-7 dishes to share, so here we go:
Starter Oysters with fermented mango chunks and she charred a little bit. Talk about an explosion of flavor in your mouth. We got that here.
We were about to order Prawns but our server recommended us to do Shrimp instead. And I was expecting shrimp-shrimps. Not in this kind of presentation. It has shrimp, avocado, Japanese carrot, taro which gives it the crunchy texture. The sauce has shrimp oil and aguachili and the texture on the sauce is lighter than it looks.
This is a vegetarian congee, it has mushroom, ginger, scallion, and hidden underneath all that, there's an egg to add texture. That was a nice surprise, because in Korean meals, they do that to alot of their dishes. If it's stone dish, when it's hot enough, it will cook the egg. But over soup, this is the same premise. That said, the mushrooms was gently fried to give it the crunch and when you mix it all up, it's delectable.
Here's the cauliflower, black garlic, yogurt and eggplants. I've never had yogurt and cauliflower together before. With the yogurt with eggplant and flavoring, you mix it together, it's like veggies you've never had before. All of us cleaned that plate in no time.
We ordered some cucumber salad for good measure.
For Entree, we got mussels, it has sour chorizo, curry leaf, fried plantain and bread for the curry. The plantain plus mussels the textures are so contrarian to each other, but it worked super well. My only complaint is that there wasn't more.
This is a very unique take on brisket. It has a peanut curry sauce, such an unusual combo with brisket, but it worked brilliantly. You see some mustard greens on top. Wow, it was just so good. I added the brisket to my congee and made it even more of a flavor party.
For dessert - this is a goat cheese cake with blackberry compote. Its texture is exactly like a cheesecake, but it's not as sweet and the goat's milk is not too strong or overpowering anything. It's pretty fun. It came with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream, goes super well, not too heavy.
This is the Tapioca, which has coconut, passionfruit panna cotta, and sesame crumble on top. You mix it all up, and the passionfruit is subtle but makes coconut extra neutral. Then you have the crumble to give you that texture, so it's not just mushy.
Then there's the famous donut. There are orange peel shaved on top, and the server comes and pour in the star anise syrup. And they accompanied with a scoop of the day, which I forgot what it was, but I liked the donut by itself just fine.
To summarize, texture and flavors are really the name of this game. It's no wonder they were Semi Finalists for James Beard award. They are really truly something different that people has been looking for.
We came during the week, but let me tell you, the party doesn't get started until 8pm here. I was so worried about being stuck in traffic and the person at the host station was so nice and moved my reservation time. When I arrived, I realized why, they were no busy during the time I booked, it's near 8p when the joint started to jump. That actually was appreciated because our server was able to take her time to explain the dishes and make her recommendation.
There are plenty parking out front, so that's not a challenge at all. That is super rare in the Heights, so I really valued that. I still recommend making a reservation, just in case. But it worked out very well.
Jun
420 E. 20th Street
Houston, TX 77008
832-469-7664
