Serves: Lunch, Dinner
Cost: ???
Experience: ^_^
Decor: Casual dining
So, my first posting to this in a while, and it's for a place halfway around the world. However, them's the breaks. I was also far too tickled by the thought that I spent a full day traveling to Israel and end up at a Chinese restaurant.
However, as the experience rating reveals, this will not be a harangue of the metaphorical slaughtering of my people's ethnic food in other nations' hands. The Pagoda is a kosher Chinese, Thai, and Japanese sushi restaurant which our driver had highly recommended as we toured northern Israel. While in general I tend to avoid eating Chinese outside of my mother's kitchen - not simply because I'm spoiled after being raised all my life on home-cooked Chinese, but quite honestly, because I feel that when I am out of my parents' house I should try the local ethnic cuisine - I would not deny others the pleasure of indulging. Thus, I put up no protest when we drove up to this delightfully touristy facade:
A kosher Chinese restaurant. Who would have thought? All these years, I had absolutely delighted in horrifying friends and acquaintances with tales of our being equal-opportunity eaters, and here was one that did not serve pork, was closed during Shabbath, etc.
But, anyway, on to the food! We started with some soups, but instead of the usual bowls, we were served the wonton and the hot and sour soup in these wonderful, personal hot-pot-like devices:
There is, no doubt, a technical term for them, but I can't for the life of me remember right now. Anyway, there are more important things to talk about, such as the flavor - these two dishes were the first sign that this meal was going to be something to talk about, and not because some foreigners had tried to imitate Chinese food as badly as how some of the road signs had been translated into English!
I thought the wonton skins were a little too thick - thick even for regular dumplings, I felt, much less the traditional thin-skinned wontons - but I could not fault the flavors (even if the filling was not made from pork - sigh). The sweet and sour was wonderful, even if it was not anything like any traditional sweet and sour soup I had ever had. Beyond the more usual chicken and mushrooms, it included bean sprouts, some minty-type greens (borrowed from Thai flavors, I suspect), and tomatoes. However, the chef did an excellent job in blending all these new flavors into the more familiar sweet-and-sour without overwhelming it - it still retained that pleasant, warming burn afterward with the tangy sharpness of vinegar and a hint of pepper. Beautifully done!
I had ordered the Thai fish in a red and coconut curry sauce as my main dish, while the others had picked out a pad thai and a cashew chicken with vegetables:
I thought this centerpiece was quite a cute and unexpectedly pretty conceit - I won't pretend that I know what it is for sure, but if that really is basil, I had no idea the flowers were so aesthetically pleasing.
I never made it to the cashew chicken, to be honest. I had been absolutely stuffed, between my entree and sneaking in a few mouthfuls of the pad thai. Once again, the taste did not disappoint - the flavors were well blended, and tasted
authentic. Considering that most of the Chinese restaurants in southern California have Mexicans making the food these days, I certainly do not think that only Chinese or other Asians can manage to balance flavors in a traditional manner. But I am not ashamed to admit I was surprised by how well they have managed to make it taste as if I was back in California eating at one of my parents' favorites. (Well, for all I know, there really is an Asian working there as head chef, but everyone else I saw there were notably non-Asian, and I'm more than willing to give them credit.)
This last dish is the short ribs. The glaze on the two ribs which I stole looked
and tasted beautiful. My only complaint would be that the portions were far too fatty and the meat slightly on the chewy side, even if they were soft enough to slice off with a dull knife (not to insult their silverware) - and on the subject of fat, I'm somewhat ambivalent. After all, some of the most famous Chinese dishes are based on literally marinating slices of pork fat for direct consumption, the fattier the better, and marbled fillets owe their extraordinary tenderness and flavor to the fat which gives them their pebbled appearance. But over the years, I've started liking my cuts of meat to be only moderately fatty, and couldn't stomach more than a few bites with a thin layer still clinging to the meat while discarding the remaining mouthfuls.
In terms of consistency of quality between all the dishes? Another big thumb's up. I can, without hesitation, give The Pagoda a resounding recommendation ... if you ever happen to be in the neighborhood, of course.
