Aside from a dozen or so local chopsticks houses with their own personalities, two trends--both from New York City--dominate the New Orleans Chinese restaurant market these days. On one hand are small, very inexpensive Chinese places focusing on take-out and delivery business. Few of those are worth talking about, but the clientele they cater to isn't looking for the fine points anyway. The other trend involves more substantial restaurants with ambitious menus that mix Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Korean dishes with the Chinese food. These appeal to a more sophisticated crowd, with stronger claims about their chefs and ingredients. (And prices noticeably higher than you may be accustomed to finding in Asian eateries, although they remain lower than those of comparable Creole, French or Italian bistros.)
Hoshun is in the latter category. It's a good example of both what's right and what's wrong with the new Pan-Asian vogue.
On Hoshun's website, owner Steve Ho claims not to be a Chinese restaurant, but one that mingles all the most popular Asian cuisines. They are all mixed up throughout the menu, which is all right, I guess--many other restaurants do the same things with other cooking styles. So you can have pho, sushi, pad thai, and General Tso's chicken all in one meal. And that works just fine. But I don't see much in the way of inventiveness--this is not a fusion, but a collection. Nor do I detect a sure sense of taste in any part of the menu.
Steve and Alice Ho have managed good Chinese restaurants for decades, starting with the Jade East in the 1970s. They were partners in Five Happiness (but not since 2005). Hoshun was on the drawing board when Katrina came. That delayed the opening two years, but we were still so restaurant-deprived then that the place made a big splash.
A unique interior design changes as you move from one part of the maze-like restaurant to another. Lighting is distinctive; ocean waves appear to ripple across the floor. The central room has tables a little too close to one another for me, but this seems to foster a social scene among the many younger customers. The smallish sushi bar is in the center of this. The liquor bar, which also includes several booths for dining, is somewhat isolated. The service staff has ranged from congenial to matter-of-fact. The music mix is less than serene.
Start with sushi, split a Thai noodle dish, then choose Chinese menu items that are neither abecedarian nor very complicated. Or slurp pho.
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