Restaurant review: Yao Fuzi Cuisine(1)
Sometimes the restaurant industry can be heartbreakingly unjust. Take, for instance, Yao Fuzi Cuisine, which serves some of the most exhilarating regional Chinese food I've tasted in this country.
So where are its customers?
The restaurant is scrunched into one of a series of strip malls along Park Boulevard, just off the Dallas North Tollway. An edifice makeover-in-progress veils Yao Fuzi in an extra layer of anonymity: A black and white banner currently announces its name with little eye-catching appeal.
On a recent Saturday night, the mall's parking lot was full, but nearly every person emerging from a car moved toward the boisterous sounds of nearby Blue Goose Cantina. From its plum, street-facing perch, the Goose's neon lighting made the shadows on the businesses behind its building seem especially somber.
We walked into Yao Fuzi to find only one other table occupied. In its emptiness, the beauty of the space was almost unsettling: blond, polished wood floors; suede brown chairs around rectangular tables in the back; dark metal partitions crowned with ornate, black and gold lamp shades and fitted with frosted glass emblazoned with Chinese characters. A small but elegant private room, decorated with teapots and figurines behind glass, looked particularly forlorn in its vacancy.
Why was the place barren? Well, beyond its relatively obscure location, at first glance the menu revealed only hints of the kitchen's richly rewarding capabilities. As presented, it read like a basic cross between Asian fusion and straight-ahead Chinese-American dishes.
"Ooh, can we get blue crab and cheese won tons?" asked one friend.
"And five-spice ribs?" requested another.
Sure. But it was the descriptions of dishes like slow-braised pork and xiao long bao (soup dumplings) that caught my eye and suggested unseen delicacies.
"Can we see the Chinese menu?" I asked our server.
She nodded and retrieved exactly that: a piece of paper filled entirely with Chinese characters. I stared at it for a moment, willing myself to spontaneously understand the words. No go. I looked up and started firing off questions.
"What kinds of specialties are these?"
"Shanghainese."
Exclamation points went off in my head. Shanghai-style cuisine is subtler than Cantonese and certainly Sichuan cooking: Seafood and braised meats dominate, and the sauces are typically gentle and sweet, but not cloyingly so. Shanghainese seems to be appearing more in stateside Chinese restaurants. Perhaps it's a coincidence, but in some ways this ancient tradition of culinary directness correlates with our current American restaurant movement toward farm-to-table lucidity.
I randomly pointed to a couple of dishes.
"What's that?"
"Stir-fried rice cake with pork."
"Never had it, let's try it. And this?"
"Shrimp with tea leaves."
"Mmm. Yes, please."
In the end, we ordered a mix of English-menu and Chinese-menu dishes. The crab and cheese won tons arrived first, and they were fine specimens of the breed: crisp and gushy. The flirty tingle from the spicing on the ribs made up for their slightly dry texture.
Then our server brought the xiao long bao in a bamboo steamer basket. Soup dumplings are, by nature, frail creatures, and the best ones present an inherent dilemma: Use chopsticks and you risk tearing their wheaty flesh and spilling their liquid contents. Use your fingers to prop them on a spoon, and it's tough to dunk them in their essential condiment: vinegar flavored with ginger.
