Off Tangent in the Orient

“You’ll have to try the coffee braised beef hot pot. But don’t forget the buchi; it’s got Reese’s chocolate filling.” These were words alien yet familiar; the usual suspects found in a Chinese restaurant’s menu. As Chow Fun’s owner Danio Caw did his roll call of dishes each came into sharp focus, wheeled in on the Lazy Susan of my mind. The hotpot, when brought in, was a bubbling bowl of dark caramel-hued stew meant more for the small, amazing eateries I imagine lining Beijing or Taipei’s side streets. Instead, it’s off Wilson Street, flanked by a Chinese herbal drugstore and facing a Buddhist temple.

Forget Starbucks, get your caffeine jolt from Chow Fun's Coffee Braised Beef. Right: Modern art - Chow Fun style

Free Zen meditation classes at the Ocean Sky temple facing the restaurant

Like other neighbourhood favourites Ristras, Chicken Charlie, and Kanzhu, Chow Fun is casual modern. Instead of red and gold decor, productions Yue Minjun’s grinning paintings hang on concrete walls. Chairs are deliberately mismatched, and so are the overhead lamps, which crowd above each table.

Chow Fun's modern interiors by designer Gwyn Guanzon

As with interiors so with the menu too: Expect a cross-section of China’s food map that delightfully goes off-tangent. The tender braised beef could nearly, effortlessly slide down your throat, but it’s the robust, assertive coffee flavour that makes it stand out. Duck spring rolls are crisp and oily, kind of like pulutan begging to be hand with a cold bottle of Tsing Tao. While a mildly gamey taste will coat your mouth, the dish is served with three sauces – orange, chilli, and vinegar.

A duck! Precisely!: Fowl-filled spring rolls with three kinds of sauce

Bigger portions include a Lechon Macau on hefty mound of fried rice. It’s a meal on its own, and while the pork is crisp enough, you’ll want it crunchier if possible. There’s a pork bun version too for merienda stop-overs. 

Lutong Macau: There's no secret to Chow Fun's hearty Lechon Macau with rice

While most dishes are good, a few are more stellar than most like Chow Fun’s House Fried Chicken. Don’t let the pedestrian name fool you – this amazing chicken could be enough to wean most off of their Bon Chon addiction. Without anything else, it could be the dish most fried chickens could aspire to: juicy white meat under a crispy skin with excellent texture.It comes coated in pepper and dried plum powder – think champoy – that reels you in with sweetness, then becomes peppery, and finally back to sweet.

The House Fried Chicken comes coated in powdered plum, and a vinegar dip on the side

And the buchi? A molten, gooey Reese’s core left us weak-kneed and pining for more!

Chow Fun's buchi comes in two versions: Dark chocolate and Reese's filling. Lord have mercy

And more there ought to be: Despite not being over six months old yet, and still refining a fluid menu, Chow Fun shows a lot of promise. Dynamic and slightly unhinged, upbeat and creative instead of staid, it puts its own stamp on what Chinese cuisine can and should, proving to us that bending rules are often fun.           

CHOW FUN Modern Chinese Bistro

Ground Floor, 103 J. Abad Santos Street, Little Baguio, San Juan City

Tel. 6241009 / 5700826

Read More

This Diet Ain't Proletariat

Gong Xi Fa Cai! What I know of Chinese New Year I've learned from ampao red envelopes containing McDonald's coupons. That and a Mandarin hat my dad once bought complete with a fake braided pigtail. This my ten-year old self wore one United Nations Day in grade school as he shuffled around the classroom and repeatedly bowed to every classmate. Karma would catch up ten years later in America when guards at my school dorm consistently mistook me for a Chinese food delivery boy. That however is for another time.

My knowledge of Chinese cuisine is only slightly better. Weaned on episodes of Cooking Master Boy and Stephen Chow's God of Cookery, I treat good Chinese food - whether it's Wok Inn's pork 'sipa' fried wontons or fresh noodles in Binondo's Ling Nam - with fanatical reverence. After all, the only proper way to appreciate a chef's cooking is by rolling all over your food before fainting.

The same goes for Cooking Master Boy's delicious-sounding 'China Within A Fish Stomach', which would be the most insane fish relleno ever made.

Until that day comes however, there is Komrad. Since it opened late last year, the quirky noodle and dimsum parlor in Eastwood has been attracting curious office workers and families, all of whom dine under the watchful gaze of Chairman Mao in a chef's jacket.

Seeing red: Vintage decor from China's communist heyday adorn Komrad's walls. 

Komrad is part of the Red Crab Group of restaurants whose head chef, Peter Ayson spent some time in Beijing and other Chinese cities researching on what the locals dined on. His search led him to Chef Chen Xuen who was operating out of a small eatery. Back in Manila, Ayson and Xuen have designed a menu that is authentically small-town, hearty, backwater China yet still ripe with cosmopolitan inventiveness.

Here's a different face to Chinese cuisine, at least one that's a safe remove from whatever you've tried in a Hap Chan or Kowloon. Taking the forefront are Hunan and Sichuan cooking, vibrant traditions infamous for their liberal of chilies, shallots, and garlic. (Mao Zedong hailed from Hunan Province hence the socialist concept.) Be prepared: Komrad's dishes are fierce and lusty, gratuitously oily, and often enough gleefully fried. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Xuen who is in his early thirties is himself quite the character. Shuffling back and forth between kitchen and dining area, he handed me dishes with a cheeky smile (and a twinkling silver tooth to boot) and in halting Filipino described what was at stake: Ito baboy. Ito manok. And later after dessert, Bayad kayo ha with a wink. 

Stalinist starters: Luscious chilled tofu with pork floss (left) and the Yakimeshi-like Komrad fried rice (right) 

The menu hearkens back to the hearty, spicy fare of China's heartland; food meant to warm you up during the cold winter months, and to open your pores come summertime. Even Chairman Mao swore by a bowl of jiggling red-tinged braised pork each day for the bright-eyed proletariat. For starters there's chilled tofu served in cascading slices swimming in soy sauce and topped with pork floss (P225). The eggplant and red bean fritters (P135) are a close second with their addictive crunch. 

For dimsum, opt for the fried Shanghai dumplings (P125) - pork balls each wrapped in a chewy, doughy mantle. There's another type laced with truffle oil, but really it's barely there. Not everything with truffle oil ends up amazing. 

Party food: Komrad's fried Shanghai pork dumplings (left), and Chef Xuen's take on Kung Pao chicken (right)

Further on, there's bite-sized Kung pao chicken almost like KFC poppers with dried chilies and peanuts (P198). These are gratifyingly crisp and mildly dry. Mind the sudden bursts of heat though, and be sure to have a glass of iced tea nearby at all times.

At one point, Xuen even brought out a small plate of pig ears in a bed of chilies, shallots, and garlic (which at this point you should be used to) that suspiciously smacked of leftovers. It's not officially on the menu, but hell, all this impromptu pulutan needed was some cold bottles of Tsing Tao to make it into perfect bar chow.

If you're adventurous look into the cumin pork ribs (P359), a rarer specimen with its telltale whiff of the exotic filling your nostrils almost immediately.

"Some customers have approached us saying their server needed deodorant, but really it's the cumin they're picking up," says Ayson with a grin. One of the staff chimed in: "Parang amoy Bumbay o Arabo!" Smell and taste are quite different however. The ribs are downright delectable with a mild, pervasive heat that coats your lips. It's not for everyone, but it is worth trying on your first visit.

Collective guilt: The sinful cumin pork ribs (left) stand out in an already quirky menu. The equally kitschy decors (right) make good use of China's revolutionary past.

So is Komrad revolutionary? Not entirely. Somewhere out there I imagine discovering the real authentic experience in a grimy little noodle and dimsum parlor in some Beijing alleyway, and not a communist-themed Eastwood restaurant. But even then, it's my gut feeling that Komrad comes close. The uncommon dishes, bold use of spices, and hearty servings will satisfy diners throughout Year of the Dragon. And if this were a lost scene from God of Cookery, I'd be rolling all over my pork ribs too.

Komrad - Mao's Hunan and Sichuan Kitchen
2nd Floor Veranda, Eastwood Mall, C5 (E. Rodriguez Avenue), Libis, Quezon City
Contact 9213440

Read More