Yumcha
This restaurant is closed!
Photo: Cititour.com
Contact Info:
Address: 29 Bedford Street
City: New York, NY
Zip: 10014
map: View the Map
Food Info:
Menu: View the Menu
Chef:
Angelo Sosa
Cuisine:
Asian
2nd Cuisine:
Tea/Tea Rooms
Cititour Review:
MY DINNER AT YUMCHA There is just one thing I didn’t like about Yumcha. But aside from this singular issue, the rest of the dining experience—from the magnificent “Modern Chinese” cuisine, to the fine service, to the serene and elegant space designed by Glen Coben (with a bathroom that is so peaceful and relaxing I felt like I was in a spa), to the rosebuds imported from Beijing that bob around in their homemade infused teas—is flawless, and one I would like to repeat, and often. The one thing I don’t like is, well, you know what, I’ll make you wait until the end of the review for that. (NO CHEATING!) Yumcha, a cool, clean and modernly Zen space warmed with rich garnet tones and dark wood, is located in the space that was formerly Bar D’O. The restaurant has undergone a radical makeover since those days. You’ll now find soft lantern lighting, glass walls etched with Chinese characters, and a lean open kitchen that allows the trance-like aroma of ginger, chiles, and star anise to fill the room, and permits diners to watch chef Anglelo Sosa, a handsome guy with a great smile, at work. Sosa, who has spent most of his career in the tutelage of Jean Georges (Spice Market and at Restaurant Jean Georges), describes his menu as “Modern Chinese”—he spent a month working in Hong Kong and learning real Chinese technique—but to me it is so much more than that. His cooking style, which clearly contains elements of Modern and Chinese, more importantly illustrates the development process of a brilliant young chef—one who is pulling from past experience in multi-starred French kitchens, and layering those skills with his own personal vision, along the way producing a menu of rare and wonderful dishes fueled by his own imagination and steeped in the exotic senses and flavors of the Far East. I dined at Yumcha last week with my friend Robert Oliver, a Fijian chef (most recently of The Cleaver Company) who will open a new place in the East Village (more to come on that later this summer), and a few friends of his—a fabulous group of men that included Dan Dimin, an entrepreneur who has just started over-nighting sustainable, line-caught fish from the West Indies (Tobago) to New York City. (If you are a chef looking for quality fish, check out www.tobagowild.com. He is selling to Le Bernardin, 71 Clinton, and Gramercy at the moment.) We all gathered ‘round a big circular table and took in the well-edited menu. (Thank the lord—another restaurant with a nice small menu!) Since there were six of us, we basically ordered the entire lot, a plan of attack which I strongly recommend. Things got off to a terrific but teary start with a platter of fantastic deep-fried Frog’s Legs ($13). Just pretend they are chicken if you are squeamish about the Kermit issue, and eat them. Really, they are fabulous and an adventure worth signing up for. The plump legs are slathered in fiery Thai chile mayonaisse, and served with shot glass of pineapple consommé to sooth your blistered and burning (but happy nonetheless) mouth. Crunchy Spring Rolls ($9) stuffed with luscious bits of pork butt, sweet shrimp and nice hits of ginger, came my way next. These greaseless and crisp golden tubes were ideal utensils for a spectacularly zippy ginger-mustard dipping sauce. This sauce had several of us, myself included, double dipping and finger licking. (When I went back later in the week with Susie, she proclaimed that she was ready to either (a) drink it or (b) bathe in it.) The Tea-Smoked Chicken ($10)—a confited breast that is smoked in green and oolong teas—was moist and tender and served sliced in circular rounds, each bite delicately infused with softly exotic flavors. We also slurped down the Udon Noodle Salad, in a perfect peanut sauce topped with a cool citrus sorbet, poured on tableside that startles all flavors to sharp attention. NICE! But the grande dame of the appetizers was the Sesame Glazed Pork Rib with Spicy Shallot and Cabbage Salad ($11). This dish, served in a deep almond shaped bowl, was hands down one of the most extraordinary things I have eaten in recent memory. That meat is beyond any known notion of succulent. I thought the pork had been braised in its own fat, but after speaking with Angelo, I discovered the real secret was in the pineapples. Yes, pineapples, which he explained have enzymes that really break down the meat. He braises all his meats in the same wild and super effective concoction—soy sauce, cassia (a Chinese cinnamon made from the bark of a cinnamon street), star anise, Thai Chiles, and quartered pineapples (with the rind left on). The result is meat that is tender to the point of impossibility. The pork rib is served in fat cubes in a salad that contains an entire weather system of flavors—a crazy twister of chiles and lime and ginger that is miraculous. Friends, wait, there is more. The Peking Duck Breast ($24)—marinated in Black Chinese vinegar, sherry wine vinegar, red wine vinegar, palm sugar and hoison Sauce—was much juicier and flavorful than I seem to recall a duck ever being. It was served in neat domino-sized slices with a spring onion crepe, sort of like a pancake. The Slow Baked Atlantic Halibut ($23) was silky in texture, crowned with a fine dice of sausages and black beans, wading in a pool of rich broth made from Chinese Lapchoung sausages (a very sweet sausage), infused with garlic, ginger, and shallots. That sausage soup was YUMMY. If you are a tofu fan, you’ll love his Silken Tofu ($16) given serious amounts of flavor from aged soy sauce and finger chiles. The Szechwan Dusted Beef Tenderloin ($24) was, like the duck, shocking in that the meat was ridiculously tender and intensely saturated with flavor. It came balanced on squat, tree stump-shaped slices of super-soft, chile-flamed Japanese eggplant. But the most startling entrée of all was a crock-pot of slow braised Ginger-Lacquered Veal Cheeks ($23), the texture of which I have never experienced before. The reason? You guessed right—that pineapple braising liquid. It is magic. (I am braising everything in this from now on.) The melting cheeks are served in an apple cider broth spiced up with fresh ginger and stocked with plenty of silky rice and firm slices of apple. The guys at my table were all hogging the last bits, though they did save a little for me. Awwww. We also ordered some Curried Fried Rice ($5), a spectacular creation of chewy, nutty rice that tasted almost like faro to me, flecked with chunks of ham and charred vegetables, nudged up to a neon-colored curry cream that gives the rice an extra special zing. Absolutely fabulous. I could not let it leave the table until desserts was planted in front of me. While Frank Bruni indicated in his Diner’s Journal that he was hungry after dining at Yumcha, we were quite sated (and very happy) after dinner. We did still had room for desserts—and so we ordered a few of them—firm fried beignets in a condensed milk fondue ($7), a terrific Green Tea Pot de Crème ($7), and a Peanut Butter Cheesecake Mousse ($8) that the guys loved but I found too sweet and creamy. It needed some texture and some balance. But the homemade ice creams were dee-vine. Okay, now I will tell you about my singular issue with Yumcha. (Are you cheating? Did you read the whole review?) Drum roll please. What I don’t like about Yumcha is….the name. For starters, Yumcha, which means “drink tea,” in Chinese, is not exactly a word that rolls off your tongue. Nor is it a name that sounds particularly sexy or inviting. But more importantly, it does not seem to speak to the concept of the place. Yumcha is not a tea house. Sure the restaurant serves a lovely selection of teas, curated by tea master Jin R—but this place is not really about tea. Yumcha is really about Angelo Sosa’s tongue-tingling, smile-inducing food. So, to me, Yumcha is the wrong name. And if you’re asking me what the right one is—which you are not, but I’ll tell you anyway—I think Sosa has quite a nice ring to it.
Review By: Andrea Strong
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