Asia de Cuba

After months of back and forth over where to go for our “first date”, DT and I finally settled on Asia de Cuba for the inaugural dinner.  Picture quality is really terrible because the lighting in that place was awful. 

Originally, we’d intended to order all appetizers, but the $69 tasting menu sounded like a really good deal – three of their most popular appetizers, two of their most popular entrees, and then a dessert to share, along with an amuse bouche to start, and an intermezzo.

Our pretty amuse bouche.  DT thought she was oh-so-funny, asking me if I planned on eating the orchid.  No, I did not.

Beef carpaccio over a tempura broccoli floret.  The broccoli was super hot, melting the meat nicely, though we both thought the flavor was a bit too faint, the broccoli overwhelming the meat a bit. 

Overview photo of our three appetizers

Tunapica: tuna tartare picadillo style with Spanish olives, black currants, almonds and coconut with soy-lime vinaigrette and wonton crisps.  I’m going to be picky here and say, just because you put tartare on a deep fried wonton wrapper… does not make it fusion.  Doesn’t that description make it sound wonderful?  I’m sure it would have been, had I tasted any olives or black currants or soy-lime vinaigrette.  To be honest, it tasted like chopped tuna with some other same-textured-stuff on top of a wonton crisp.  I didn’t find this impressive at all, and actually it was only alright.

Braised oxtail spring roll with Cuban black been papaya salsa and port wine reduction.  Again, what’s with the muted flavors?  I expected pop, zing, sizzle, something interesting.  The black beans – there’s papaya?  Where? – were woefully boring, just beans with nothing melding them with any other flavor.  The spring roll itself was deeply beefy, but had no interesting counterpoint to elevate it to another level.  Texturally, the inside was beefy softness, and the outside didn’t do much to counter this and make it intriguing.  Boring.

Calamari salad ‘Asia de Cuba’ – crispy calamari with chayote, hearts of Palm, banana, cashews, chicory and radicchio with sesame orange dressing.  The calamari, I assure you, was not of the crispy sort.  It was distinctly not fried or crispy whatsoever.  I was most looking forward to this dish because I have heard and read time and again how delicious it was.  While it was easily the best dish of the night, I can’t say that it worked out too well for me.  The banana was a pleasant surprise, but inconsistently sprinkled throughout; the calamari, not plentiful enough to really speak or be called a calamari salad.  Overall, though, the bite or two I had that actually did encompass all or most of the ingredients listed was quite delicious, but the salad itself was inconsistent.

Intermezzo

Salmon tartare with pica de gallo – this was incredibly bright and lush, juicy from the tomatoes and supremely fresh.  I changed my mind.  This was the best thing all night, not the calamari salad.

Char sui beef short ribs, congre tostones and chili orange mojo.  I was impressed with how soft the meat was – it pulled apart easily into smaller pieces – and enjoyed the taste with a segment of orange.  However, the meat was also strangely crunchy/dry – within the same piece, around the edges, which detracted from the enjoyable flavors.  The beans and rice were negligible at best, and at worst, downright pedestrian. 

Well, if you cover anything in sweetened soy sauce, it’ll taste good, I suppose.

Miso cured cod, Cuban black bean and edamame salad, tempura Shisito peppers.  DT really hated this dish.  She took some of the fish, ate it, then looked at me and said “I’m not going to say anything until you try it.  Try it.  Try it.  Go on, try it.”  I took a piece, and admitted that the texture tasted a bit off; too squishy and soft.  Not off as in spoiled, just… something was missing.  But the flavor; I can’t deny that I love miso and the salty-sweet combination coating the fish pleased me.  The texture may have been all one-dimensional and flat, but the taste was perfect for my tongue.  (DT disliked it so much that after eating a small piece, she gave over the rest to me, which I happily consumed just for the miso flavor.)  The rest of it was boring again; beans and edamame “salad”, nothing to bind the flavors together.  Mehhh.

Our dessert, a spiced chocolate blahblahblah, was impressive to look at but we were both like, uhhh, how are we supposed to eat this?  And so we knocked it over.  The cake was tasty enough though, yet again, nothing special.  The coffee ice cream had like graham cookies underneath it or something, and there lay our texture fix, smooth, creamy, delicious ice cream against a crunchy counterpart.  That was totally yummy.  I had nothing against the cake, per se, but I didn’t taste any cinnamon or warming spices.  We both abandoned it after about 5 minutes of picking at it.

Yvo says: Overwhelmingly mediocre.  I mean, wow.  I couldn’t have been more surprised that such a widely liked restaurant (and I mean by my friends, not by critics, people I don’t know) was so horrifyingly blah for DT and I.  And though the service wasn’t bad, per se, it was overly attentive at strange moments (mostly when we got to good parts of our conversation), and then completely inattentive at other points.  Our waiter really offended DT though we couldn’t pinpoint why – he was just very in her personal space, while ignoring me.  For $95 a person (including tax, tip, and a glass of wine), I really expected and wanted much more from the food.
sad to say, not recommended at all