Big chunks of pork belly are braised in a wok with garlic, star anise, rice wine, and sugar that caramelizes to achieve the dish’s distinctive, dark-red color. Chairman Mao was born in the Shaoshan prefecture of Hunan, and this dish is often said to be a favorite of his. This was followed by an equally stunning dish, and another Hunan classic: braised pork in Mao’s style ($20). If an emerald had a flavor profile, this would be it. Each bite is creamy and fiery with very little egg flavor once all the ingredients are lightly macerated with the pestle. Selected from among the appetizers, century egg and cold eggplant ($15) came attractively deposited in a mortar and pestle, with a whole egg tinted translucent like obsidian, an effect achieved by soaking it in quicklime and ash for weeks. Eggplant, green chiles, and century egg in a mortar - squish it up.īut the next dish really hit the spot. Our impressive feast was preceded by a plate of lackluster pork dumplings that arrived dry, as if they’d been steamed hours before. My friends and I went for the Hunan dishes, which tend to be hotter than Sichuan and filled with all sorts of incredible ingredients that are preserved by smoking, drying, salting, and pickling. The menu mixes Hunan and Sichuan cooking, with a small section of Chinese American dishes the selection of which are a revelation, suggesting which dishes are considered of American origin, including chicken with broccoli and kung pao shrimp (the latter actually traces back to Sichuan). As I arrived, a high school student sat down and lit into Beethoven’s “Pathetique Sonata,” as an appreciative audience stood around her. Located on the ground floor of an office building, Chef Tan is large and serpentine in layout, with an interior sumptuously clad in stained woods and burnished gold panels, slits along one wall through which flickering video flames can be seen, and, smack dab in the middle, a black grand piano. ![]() I was researching the area ahead of an update to the area’s best restaurants map when I came across this establishment. So it was no surprise that I missed the opening of Chef Tan three years ago on the north end of the Jersey City’s unpromising Newport neighborhood, which is mostly high-rises with franchise restaurants. Located among office buildings in Newport.
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