Last Sunday I was at a meal as part of the filming of the show "The Next Restaurant", where I met the restaurant Corner of China. This is the second restaurant that opened as part of the show.
I signed up to be one of the guests and to my delight they called me from the production and said there was a room for the first evening. I was a little surprised, but I was very curious, so I just could not refuse. So I chose a friend to enjoy with me in this experiment and set off.
The concept is that each diner pays 250 NIS for a first course, main course, dessert and a drink. Do not really know what is going to eat, especially when it's the first evening of the restaurant.
The restaurant is located in a building that used to be Herbert Samuel restaurant of Chef Jonathan Rochefeld. Although it closed a few years ago, it is very difficult to forget it and the special food it brought to this world. A little secret, this was the first chef's restaurant I ate at with my husband. We sat at the bar, everything was so beautiful, the bartender was equipped with excellent service and we really enjoyed ourselves. At some point we were even offered a tour of the kitchen. So I missed it a bit and it was a nice addition to this evening.
The restaurant we came to was a Chinese restaurant, by chefs Shahar Wang and Oren Ben Michael. The design was traditional Chinese and the food of course Chinese (not so traditional in my opinion). We sat down in a nice corner, got a menu, and after a light look at the 8 dishes that were in it, we chose to share dishes together so that we could taste as much as possible and understand what was really going on here.
We started with a first course of Ban Shepondera Char-Siu Gaungdong. A dish of ban stuffed with long-cooked shepondera, with cinnamon, star anise, ginger, shallots, cucumber, coriander and red chili. An ordinary dish it must be said. The meat was fine, but I would have expected it to be softer, and generally not sure how much it was a Chinese dish or even an upgrade of one. #yammmmm
Sheitel Kung-Pao Sichuan. A dish of slices of seared sheitel, with caramel, onion, Sichuan pepper seeds and peanuts, along with rice as a side dish. The slices looked stunning but they were not soft enough and we did not get a knife so we could handle this incident. The rice was not made well enough, and the onion that came next to the sheitel was not an addition that lifted the dish. #yammmmm
We moved to the main courses with Noodles and Chicken in Yunnan Sesame Sauce. A dish of handmade noodles with black onions, chicken, sesame seeds, peanuts, buck choy, chili oil and coriander. Undoubtedly the best dish in the meal. The chicken was very crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside and it blended great with the softness of the noodles in every bite. #yammmmm
A dish of Steamed Fish Hong Kong. A steamed fillet that came with tofu, shiitake mushrooms, scallions, ginger strips, crispy garlic and light soy sauce and shao-sing wine, plus rice. I love tofu so of course it was delicious, but I wanted more from it (there were 3 pieces on the plate compared to 100 that were when the dish came out in the show), the mushrooms got the taste of the sauce and were very tasty and the fish was nice but the topping not made it nicer. #yammmmm
*From the filming of the show "The Next Restaurant".
For dessert we got Steamed Azuki Pudding, with Chinese red beans, anise toffee sauce, red bean crumble and arak diplomat cream. A dessert that is full of a variety of delicious textures, so if we managed to put in the crumble, cream and sauce in one spoon it was insanely delicious. #yammmmm
Black Sesame Sinabon and Maccha. This is a brioche dough stuffed with ground black sesame seeds with a sauce of macha (ground dried green tea) wrapped in cream cheese poured by the chef himself at the table, and on top we got a twill of oranges and black sesame seeds. A dessert we'd better not get to the table (it almost happened). This is a dry pastry that only looks like sinabon, but because it came dry and burnt it led to a really unpleasant aftertaste. #yammmmm
It's a #yammmmm