On other visits, four in all, we made only a slight dent in the menu. One of the must-order meat dishes is the oxtails ($12), with red wine sauce perfumed with five-spice powder and set in a clay pot with bright chunks of carrots and other vegetables. Lee and Chan also recommend the honey-smoked sea bass ($22), which has a deep red hue and a subtle sweet and smoky flavor, arranged on a bed of baby corn (unfortunately, canned and tinny), snap peas and bok choy. The bones are edible, and little pieces of the fried skeleton add a salty, crisp highlight. The flesh is cut into bite-size pieces and stir-fried with snap peas, and carrots cut to resemble dragons, and glazed judiciously with a light sweet-and-sour sauce. Just about every table seems to head to the flounder two ways ($19), in which the carcass is deep fried and formed to arch over the sauteed fish below. Lots of organ meats and other body parts that are often rejected by many Westerners are missing. The food reflects this refinement, with multiple shark's fin, abalone and whole steamed fish selections, but the long menu nonetheless seems conservative. Tables are clothed in white, with fully upholstered chairs, and are spaced wide enough apart that conversations are kept private. The walls of the elegant, carpeted dining room are painted French vanilla, accented with a gleaming white molding that gives a high-toned Western feel.īeautiful Japanese paintings, Chinese ceramics and carved screens separate the kitchen door from the dining room. Patrons enter through the bar that features a marble floor and an impressive backlit marble slab. It's little wonder that Tai Pan has become a special place. Then there is a multi-page book with more than 100 selections, including the steamed chicken ($18 whole), abalone maw and shark's fin soup ($12), live shrimp and lobster sashimi (price varies), sauteed squab with lily pods ($16) and steamed frog with lotus leaf ($15), all specialties management thinks might not appeal to the non-Asian diner.Īs with many Hong Kong-style places, the 168-seat restaurant is designed for private celebrations and on many nights the back room is filled with diners celebrating birthdays, anniversaries and other events. That's also probably why there's a confusing array of menus - a "short" one that has a mere 59 savory dishes and a prix-fixe version that features six-course ($39) and four-course dinner ($29) menus. Dishes, while fresh and good, are often modified to please what the owners believe is the prevailing palate.
That's the dilemma of eating in a Chinese restaurant that caters to Western tastes. Lee and her husband, Christopher Chan, who was an architect and now works in the restaurant alongside his wife, took good care of us, but we still felt a little cheated out of the really good stuff. After all, she not only works the dining room but is also in charge of the kitchen and creates many of the recipes with chef Kai Hing Wong. The meat was sliced thin across the bone, napped in a lightly sweet soy sauce that she knew would please a wide variety of palates. You'll like it much better."įull as we were, we had to eat it, and in fact it did look beautiful. Like a kindly but firm schoolteacher, Lee said, "I've already got the veal chop coming out. When I had ordered the chicken, the waiter had looked surprised and tried to steer us to the fried version, but I was adamant that I knew what I wanted. We'd also polished off a vibrant shrimp dumpling soup ($8). We'd also downed a generous portion of somewhat greasy chow fun noodles with beef and yellow chives ($12), light minced chicken in lettuce cups ($8) and crispy vegetarian goose rolled up like a burrito and filled with carrots, onions, black tree fungus and other ingredients ($8). Pulled from the tank fighting, they were quickly steamed and served whole with a light dipping sauce made of soy, garlic, scallions, sesame and ginger.
The chicken was perfect, the texture as delicate as velvet and the flavor so deep that the accompanying pungent ginger paste was superfluous.īy the time it had arrived we'd already consumed a dozen or so prawns (price varies).
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