Tuesday, August 9, 2011.
Curry Off The Corner. China Rose.
My first thought for dinner was the Curry Corner, a little restaurant in the old Carrollton Branch of the Whitney Bank (but not the old-old one, which is across Oak Street from the old one, and a block from the new one). Curry Corner is owned by the same guy who owns Sara's. I've wanted to try it for some time, but never thought of it at the right time. Nor did I tonight, as it turned out. A sign on the door said that tomorrow the Curry Corner would reopen as a New York-style deli. Well, I missed that one. Glad I didn't come a month ago, when the effort would have been wasted.
Instead, I wound up continuing my current investigation of the Chinese restaurant population. Too many in that category have gone unreviewed. I don't think I'll find much of brilliance--most of the new places are clearly for the take-out business, not to thrill palates. But I'm hoping for some nice surprises.
I had one tonight. The China Rose is a new/old restaurant. It originally was in the shopping mall on Robert E. Lee and West End Boulevards. The Katrina flood put it out of existence for awhile. The old place was too badly damaged to be repaired, so the owners took over the former Ming Palace in Metairie. A couple of blocks toward the lake from Drago's, this is a pleasant little restaurant but not nearly as nice as the old place, which the China Rose inherited from the overbuilt Imperial Palace. (I may be giving out too much information, but my head is full of these connections.)
My past meals at the new China Rose were not spectacular. I was lured by the existence of a "Chinese menu." (As opposed to an Chinese-American menu.) This is the hot thing: dishes allegedly of interest only to Chinese people. However, what I've found so far is very plain, homestyle food. I think what is going on is this. Chinese natives have nostalgia for the dishes they grew up with, and here they are. In other words, it's the Chinese answer to meat loaf and macaroni and cheese. I have a feeling that the dishes cooked for Americans is actually more ambitious and better--restaurant food, as opposed to home cooking.
Yes, yes, home cooking is good, sometimes wonderful, and sometimes better than restaurant food. But if it were always better than restaurant food, nobody would go to restaurants.
Well, I'm not ready to say that this is true of China Rose's Chinese menu. I've only eaten from it twice, and without the benefit of Chinese hosts. But I really think that my theory is possibly true.
My supper was from the Americanized menu, mostly. I began with hot and sour soup, good in flavor, if overthick with cornstarch. Then an order of shrimp toast, made as well as any I've had in a long time. The dish consists of a toasted slice of white bread on the bottom, piled with a mixture of finely-chopped shrimp with enough egg to hold it together. The whole thing is cut into sixths, sprinkled with sesame seeds, then deep-fried into pyramids of nearly-fluffy shrimpiness. I've always liked shrimp toast, but what most Chinese places put out under that name is terrible. This was not only good but enough for two people.
The entree was chicken curry, an attempt to satisfy the urge that took me to Curry Corner first. Chinese curry has only a little in common with Indian curry. This version had even less than usual. Chicken, onions, carrots, bell peppers, a light sauce with none of the distinctive curry flavors. They did, however, make it pepper-hot, as I requested. Can't say I didn't like it. Ate too much of the large portion.
A friend I haven't seen for many years came over from the next table. She was eating from the Chinese menu, and brought me some scallion pancakes. Oily, dry, flavorless. Home cooking. What I'd eaten was incomparably better.
China Rose. Metairie: 3501 N Arnoult. 504-887-3295.
