XO Kitchen, A Nice Chinese Eatery
May 15 '01 (Updated May 17 '01)
The Bottom Line XO Kitchen is a comfortable, trendy restaurant catering to those looking for good Hong Kong style cuisine and eclectic items not normally found in a typical Chinese menu.
XO Kitchen is a young, trendy restaurant catering to those looking for good Hong Kong style cuisine and eclectic items not normally found in a typical Chinese menu. Do not expect to find American Chinese food here, no General Tsao’s Chicken, Chop suey, or “Moo goo gai pan” nonsense.
The restaurant is not a dive, and there are no throngs of tourists, foodies, and hipsters flocking to eat here. Those who occasionally stumble in may be surprised at the honesty and quality of the food. Patrons are greeted with oolong tea served hot in glasses, and served cold when the weather gets steamy.
Decor and Atmosphere:
The decor is a mix of South Asian and European influences with bamboo and exposed brick walls, comfortable rosewood colored high-backed chairs, incandescent lightning lit just right, and Chinese kitchen gods keeping watch over the place. The restaurant can hold about 30 people in main dining area in the front, and an additional 10-15 across a rustic wooden bridge in the back. What is surprising is the large staff of people serving the restaurant. The entire waitstaff is under 25yrs old; a few seem inexperienced, but efficient once you catch their attention.
Normally, Chinese restaurants come and go depending on what is trendy at the moment, and the quality of the food. XO Kitchen is doing fine, still drawing people to it a few years after its opening. The place attracts a large mix of young people as well as some older couples. The restaurant is sometimes crowded, especially during the weekends.
The strength of this restaurant is the large menu of over a hundred different items. This does not include beverage and dessert. Much of the cuisine is Cantonese, but there are Taiwanese, Japanese, and European dishes as well. Food presentation is impressively good.
Food:
Appetizers are those little dishes that start off a meal, and are sometimes as interesting as anything else on the menu. At XO, the appetizers do not disappoint. The fried dumplings are pretty good, filled with vegetables, pan-fried golden brown and garnished with a lot of chopped scallions.
If you wish, you can have some very traditional Chinese dishes like “Jellyfish with preserved duck egg and ginger”, or “Pig knuckles with ginger and sweet vinegar”. Try the European style “Baked green mussels with garlic sauce”, or explore nouveau trailor-trash cuisine such as “Scallops with (velveeta) cheese and mayonnaise”. Appetizers range from $3.95-$7.95.
For entrees, there are noodle soups, casseroles, grilled chicken, steak, lo mein and other items. The lo mein is Hong Kong style made by steamed noodles served with soup broth. It is low fat, but not that great tasting. The casseroles items are like American casseroles using rice or spaghetti, and cream based sauces. Entrees are inexpensive at $3.50-$8.95, with steak dishes at $13.95.
Ordinary dishes like pork chops are also nicely done. The pork chop dish offered by XO Kitchen is called “Salt baked pork chop with egg on rice”. It is a nicely presented dish of one-and-one-half to two pork chops broiled to tenderness, served with a chunky pickled vegetable sauce alongside a mound of freshly made fried rice, small Shanghai choi sum, and half of a pickled egg. The flavors of this dish really fit together, just delicious.
For dessert, the choices are many. In Chinese, dessert is called “tong shui” literally translated as “sugar water”, and available in many variations and flavors. There are the traditional soupy favorites like red bean and lotus seed, or black sesame paste, then there are the exotic, “Snow frog with lotus nuts and lily bulb” – no real frogs? I cannot say ;)
Beverages include fruit shakes, milk shakes, and any type of tea novelty including popular Taiwanese style sago tea. This tea is the latest trend to come from Asia. This is basically milk tea served with black tapioca pearls and drunk using a fat straw to help you suck up the black pearls at the bottom of the drink.
One thing that is really good is the congee. Basically rice soup, gruel, porridge, or whatever you call it, it is tasty and filling and is a traditional Cantonese breakfast food. The special $2.00 breakfast menu includes a minced fish ball congee that is a steal.
XO Kitchen seems to be a nice place to dine with friends. The prices are reasonable, the food eclectic, and the staff friendly at times.
Rating
Food and Presentation -- 3.1 stars
Ambience and Décor – 3 stars
Quality of Service -- 2.8 stars
Overall -- 3 stars.
Location:
XO Kitchen
148 Hester Street, one block north of Canal, half block west of Bowery.
Open 8am – 10pm.
No Credit cards accepted.
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N.B. this review was originally written Aug 4, 2000 and languished in the odd budget restaurant category of the travel section. I completely rewrote it before putting it here.
N.B.
What is the origin of XO? It derives from XO cognac which itself symbolizes high quality and expensive. In Chinese cooking, XO pays tribute to the expensive and exclusive nature of good cognac, and its high quality designation. Sometimes you may see Lobster braised with XO sauce on a menu, or the popular XO pork and cabbage dumplings in the frozen section of a Chinese supermarket. These items were made from XO sauce, which is a recent invention from Hong Kong. It is a hot sauce made from shrimp paste, chilies, dried bacon, and dried sea scallops, all ground together into a paste. The sauce is hot and very good, with the type of ingredients listed, extraordinary. One can purchase XO sauce at the market, Lee Kum Kee is just one of the brands.
Fri Aug 18 nytimes dining out section also had an article on the sauce.
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