Tasty China: From the belly
By Tom Maicon at June 9, 2009 | 4:32 pm | Print
Occasionally a restaurant arrives that instantly grabs the hearts, touches the souls and wakes the palates of nearly every individual who walks through its doors. You know it right away, at very first bite, that this restaurant will be one of great significance, and that it will ultimately alter the culinary landscape, as we know it.
Tasty China (585 Franklin Rd #215, Marietta, 770.419.9849) is one such restaurant. When it opened 3 years ago, word spread through the gastro-underworld faster than swine flu fears swept through Mexico.
The electricity in the kitchen at that time was internationally-acclaimed chef Peter Chang, whose naughty, in-your-face style of cooking was a much welcomed stray from the norm. Perhaps his unique style was no more than a study in multiple personalities. Most of Chang’s dishes were mind-blowingly explosive—reaching nuclear heat levels that didn’t exude even the slightest notion of balance, but instead aired a certain sense of disobedience.
And yet other dishes were a clinic for the tame. So fantastically subtle, so brilliantly balanced—you’d swear you weren’t eating at the same restaurant at all.
But Chang, known upon arrival for being the Richard Blais of the Chinese restaurant world, quickly slipped away.
Today, chef Liu and chef Wong are at the helm. Together they instill a sense of discipline and some balance to Chang’s menu. Yes, the food still packs plenty of heat, but won’t take you from zero to meltdown in a single mouthful.
I don’t plan to spend my space here with a rundown of the entire menu, instead I’d like to mention a few new dishes that can be found on the specials board for now, and will likely make it onto the everyday menu very soon.
Dry fried pork belly. Need I say more? I didn’t think so, but I will anyway. Thin seemingly dry wafers of pork belly arrive in a basket tossed with chilies, cilantro and green onions. Each blissfully chewy bite explodes a spicy, salty, oily goodness that progressively sends the mouth soaring into a seriously heightened sense of excitement, but manages to quit before palate overload takes over—a breaking point I don’t think the wild child Chang ever wanted to find.
Like Chang, the new chefs keep adding to the menu’s subtle side. A shrimp ball with butter arrives a large crusty layered orb that cuts into a soft buttery piping hot shrimp center. It’s like dim sum, but better, and served as one giant hunk rather than smaller spheres for sharing.
A Chinese salad called “the rooster is crowing at the break of dawn” will run you through the texture spectrum, from silky soft tofu to crunchy cold cabbage and nuts, then littered with cilantro and chilies. It’s a fun dish that seems to nod to Southeast Asia in texture, but the dishes bold flavor screams Szechuan all the way.
I was a big Peter Chang fan when he arrived. I thought his food to be wildly entertaining and bold, but at times too much for the palate process. This is where I believe Liu and Wong have taken the Tasty China experience to a whole new level. The food is every bit as electrifying as it was under Chang, but it now exudes some balance and good sense that will makes craziness more tolerable.
Yes, the food is a little more balanced now that the impish Chang is gone, but a meal at Tasty China is still taking a walk on the wild side.
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