Mapo tofu from Cafe China is aight
Did y'all catch the article last week by Eric Asimov about the state of being a critic? I think if there's one thing to note about the state of restaurant criticism, I think it's very safe to say that big publishers have won out. Most of us that visit sites like Yelp just look at the star rating to make sure it's not below three stars and to see the address. Sure there's sites that carry the latest news and openings and other sites that let you order online or check the menu, but those do not take away from major reviews. Then with Google buying Zagat, all that's going to do is dilute the usefulness of a site like Yelp because all most users want is contact info about the restaurant anyway. As for bloggers? Most bloggers I know are blogging less and less, and the ones that make a living out of this do recipe blogs and cookbooks. We could say that a blog like immaculate infatuation has made it, but they're just one blog out of an infinite number of blogs that have tried restaurant review blogs. So what's a little guy in the game supposed to do? We just do what most of us did in high school, which is go to places that the cool kids are going to. Midtown Lunch and Serious Eats - New York went to Cafe China recently and I knew what I had to do. Follow the cool kids to Cafe China and hope to get some traction when people search for this new-ish Sichuan restaurant in Midtown. See what I did there? Keywords baby. Still can't beat the big guys.
There's a few items on the lunch specials menu that's $8 or $9 dollars. I picked mapo tofu because it's one of those things you just have to do when you visit a Sichuan restaurant. It's a nice barometer of what they can do, and whether they go the extra length to actually add Sichuan peppercorns in order to make the dish mouth numbingly hot. Serious Eats said their version had plenty of chili oil and Sichuan Peppercorns, but mine was only abundant in chili oil. There wasn't anything mouth numbing about the dish, although it was very good. If you compare it to Szechuan Gourmet, you'll probably note that the tofu at SG is softer... but quibbling with the texture of the tofu is really not that important. It's the heat that I'm looking for and I thought it was kind of mild. The part that sucks is that I even asked for extra spicy, so maybe they just don't dial it up that spicy. Still delicious though, just could be better.
Also the menu on Cafe China's website said there would be either soup or spring roll with the lunch special and I didn't get one. They didn't ask when I was ordering so maybe the actual menu has changed or maybe they were just busy. Double check the menu when you order take-out and if it's on there, make sure to ask for it if it's important enough to you. I think the main problem for Cafe China is that they're so close to Szechuan Gourmet, and for the mapo tofu dish, it's a little over a dollar cheaper at SG and you can switch the soup to coke. Since Cafe China isn't vastly better, I'll probably stick to Szechuan Gourmet for mapo tofu. There's a couple of other dishes in Cafe China's lunch special menu that looks worthy of a try though.
Cafe China
13 E 37th St.
New York, NY 10016
212-213-2810
Awesome review. The mapo tofu definitely looks great in the picture. But where's the fun in being mildly spicy? Wish there were more peppercorns, but maybe I'll get around to trying this sometime. Thanks for this post.
Austin Scott Brooks
January 9, 2012 10:00 am
their pork dumplings in chili oil were pretty good for a non-Chinatown place
TT
January 9, 2012 4:10 pm
@Austin,
Thanks, glad you liked the review. I definitely wish they'd up the heat a bit...
@TT,
oooh dumplings in chili oil. I'll have to try that out next time. There's some other things on the lunch specials menu to try too.
Danny
January 11, 2012 1:45 pm