Chow Bar ØØ $$$
230 W4th St
Yilin and I ended up at Chow Bar for a few reasons: she had been wanting to try eating here as she had heard good things about it, and it was a card in our Diner's Deck that Mike and Hyunmi bought us. So we walked the brief walk from Yilin's apartment and were seated rather quickly even though it was near capacity.
The decor is pretty cool: lots of red and fun asian-themed decorating. A large number of Chinese characters (which translate to different types of foodstuff according to my cosmopolitan girlfriend) adorn the walls and rafters. It was simple yet well designed.
However, I care not for decor; I am interested purely in taste. Alas, Chow Bar failed to live up to our expectations in that most important of criteria. The menu makes every dish sound amazing. Each dish is not amazing, I can assure you.
We started with shared steamed vegetables in a bamboo steamer; Chinese broccoli, mushrooms, a long string bean, water chestnut, and cabbage. They were good, but they were only steamed vegetables, so I wasn't expecting gustatory gold.
Yilin ordered sake which came in a little square cup which it overflowed out of onto a saucer. The waitress told her that she was supposed to drink the overflow on the saucer as well. Interesting, but it ended up being nearly three ounces of sake in my estimation. Needless to say, Yilin felt that. ;)
She actually ate food, too. She had sesame crusted seared tuna that was served with a brown rice pancake. The tuna meat itself was very good, and the preparation good as well, but the description sounded so much better. Not that it tasted different than expected, but it just fell short of what it could've been.
I ordered duck with Sake fruits and scallion pancakes. The duck was good, but just good. Again, it didn't quite live up to my expectation of what it would be. The potato pancakes weren't the crispy fried scallion goodness I was used to, but more like the pancakes you get with moo shu pork (floppy, stretchy, and soft) with bits of scallion in them. Unacceptable!
I am fairly certain that we opted out of dessert and just left.
In the end, we both were a bit disappointed with Chow Bar. I must point out, however, that this negative review may be due to the fact that we had the most incredible dining experience at New Leaf Cafe the night before. I suppose almost any meal would fall flat when compared to such exquisiteness.
(I need to thank Yilin very much for graciously reminding me of what we ordered. Surprisingly, as much as I enjoy eating, I can never remember what I ate, only whether I liked it or not. Really, it is sad.)
Yilin and I ended up at Chow Bar for a few reasons: she had been wanting to try eating here as she had heard good things about it, and it was a card in our Diner's Deck that Mike and Hyunmi bought us. So we walked the brief walk from Yilin's apartment and were seated rather quickly even though it was near capacity.
The decor is pretty cool: lots of red and fun asian-themed decorating. A large number of Chinese characters (which translate to different types of foodstuff according to my cosmopolitan girlfriend) adorn the walls and rafters. It was simple yet well designed.
However, I care not for decor; I am interested purely in taste. Alas, Chow Bar failed to live up to our expectations in that most important of criteria. The menu makes every dish sound amazing. Each dish is not amazing, I can assure you.
We started with shared steamed vegetables in a bamboo steamer; Chinese broccoli, mushrooms, a long string bean, water chestnut, and cabbage. They were good, but they were only steamed vegetables, so I wasn't expecting gustatory gold.
Yilin ordered sake which came in a little square cup which it overflowed out of onto a saucer. The waitress told her that she was supposed to drink the overflow on the saucer as well. Interesting, but it ended up being nearly three ounces of sake in my estimation. Needless to say, Yilin felt that. ;)
She actually ate food, too. She had sesame crusted seared tuna that was served with a brown rice pancake. The tuna meat itself was very good, and the preparation good as well, but the description sounded so much better. Not that it tasted different than expected, but it just fell short of what it could've been.
I ordered duck with Sake fruits and scallion pancakes. The duck was good, but just good. Again, it didn't quite live up to my expectation of what it would be. The potato pancakes weren't the crispy fried scallion goodness I was used to, but more like the pancakes you get with moo shu pork (floppy, stretchy, and soft) with bits of scallion in them. Unacceptable!
I am fairly certain that we opted out of dessert and just left.
In the end, we both were a bit disappointed with Chow Bar. I must point out, however, that this negative review may be due to the fact that we had the most incredible dining experience at New Leaf Cafe the night before. I suppose almost any meal would fall flat when compared to such exquisiteness.
(I need to thank Yilin very much for graciously reminding me of what we ordered. Surprisingly, as much as I enjoy eating, I can never remember what I ate, only whether I liked it or not. Really, it is sad.)
posted by josh at 12:18 PM
2 Comments:
actually we had fried wontons filled with dark chocolate for dessert, it came with vanilla ice cream.
we had agreed that it was the best dish from our dinner at chow bar that night...
oh yeah, chocolate wontons. see everyone? my poor food memory at work.
thank you once again, yilin. clearly i am incapable of writing reviews myself and rely on your memory and food expertise, which means that i am very happy that you are my girlfriend. :)
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