Herald on Sunday rating: * * 1/2
Address: 1 Pakenham St East
Phone: (09) 365 2585
Website: www.chow.co.nz
Open: Open seven days from noon until midnight
Vegetarians: A third of the menu
Wine list: More than adequate. Also cocktails, beers, sake
Sound check: Boisterous
Watch out for: The rowdies in the bar
Bottom line: A food hall with pretensions.
KEY POINTS:
From the diner's point of view, "I'm going to need that chair back" is not a great opening line. The young waitress who served us at Chow, and uttered it in place of "Good evening" or "Hi", remains nameless because I found her gracelessness more puzzling than offensive and I suspect she wasn't actually trying to be rude.
The problem was that my daughter had grabbed a nearby (unused) chair so the three of us could face each other from a convivial three sides of our table rather than be spread out like birds on a wire. The waitress apparently regarded this as something between a breach of protocol and a calculated insult. I wondered whether she might be able to rustle up a chair from elsewhere, which she thought an utterly inspired suggestion but I still wonder why she didn't think of it herself.
This crisis averted, we turned our attention to the menu. Chow is one of four (the other three are in Wellington) in a chain of the pan-Asian eateries that have become something of a culinary fashion in the past few years. Wagamama is the international template, and East a local adaptation (although East established itself before Wagamama set up shop here).
These "Western-styled noodle bars" (East's self-description) grew up, one assumes, because of a perceived appetite for Asian food that's, well, not too Asian. This strikes me as slightly sad. The best kind of Asian restaurant is one that is so packed with natives of the country whose cuisine is being served that it's a hard job to get a table.
When we arrived, the bar was heaving with office types. Some had colonised the deck to smoke and exchange hoots and shrieks, which must be fun if you live in those apartments across the street. But the restaurant end, with its own door, is quieter and, divided into small areas that are almost intimate.
The speciality of the house is the so-called "long plate", on which are arrayed five small morsels of Asian-fusion tucker, alongside a bowl of dipping sauce. Sometimes these are more fusion than Asian: the deep-fried wontons stuffed with blue cheese and peanuts and drizzled with a sickly berry puree would have to be the most hideous single thing it has ever been my misfortune to eat, with the possible exception of snake, but there's no accounting for taste and I am sure some people love them.
As to the rest, they vary between perfectly acceptable and puzzling: the smoked eel in the Vietnamese-inspired cold rice-paper rolls was barely discernible because of all the coriander and chilli paste, the taste of squid was swamped with teriyaki sauce, and the rib of beef (one of the more expensive dishes) was bony small-end meat, tough and tasteless.
The steamed dishes, notably the banana-leaf-wrapped fish and the "pork pot sticker" dumplings, were much better but the value for money is very questionable. When five small dumplings cost $13, for example, more than twice the price of three big ones in any yum cha joint around town, Chow starts to look more like a marketing idea than a meal, more concept than cuisine.
Admittedly I had two hungry students in tow, but $180 is an expensive meal for three. And, as an east-meets-west experience, it's more west-avoids-east, really.
- Detours, HoS
