Great pastry, savoury food at Mak N Ming
Their tasting menus stand out
Mak is for Makoto Ono and Ming is Amanda Cheng’s Chinese name. Together, they run Mak N Ming, a tiny, pill box of a restaurant in Kitsilano (an 850-square-footer).
A squeeze it might be, but it’s big in talent and heart. Ono and Cheng are two of the city’s exciting young chefs. They cooked at Pidgin in Gastown under the stress of nightly anti-gentrification protests that went on for well over three months upon opening.
Here, as at Pidgin, Ono does the savoury, Cheng does pastry. The couple cut loose from Pidgin about a year ago and worked at temporary jobs until opening in mid-December.
With limited space (let’s say the kitchen staff had better stay slender), the menu is streamlined and there won’t be a lot of creative dipsy doodling from week to week, but the food will be inventive and surprising. They offer a three-course demi menu ($54) and a six-course chef ’s menu ($78). Both come with addons of amuse bouche and a plate of mignardise at the end.
Ono’s food takes cues from his Japanese background but it’s unlikely you’ll see sushi here — not the straight up kind, at any rate. Nothing about Ono’s food follows traditional routes. The menu will change seasonally, he says, which makes me wonder if people will be making return visits to have the same tasting menu over a season. “I’ll change a dish in January, and make changes for Valentine’s,” he says.
His Japanese restaurant background makes him a natural at seafood. “I tend to gravitate toward it. My parents opened the first sushi restaurant in Winnipeg, and I worked there,” he says. He went on to work at West in Vancouver and Pierre Marco White and Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurants in England as well as running a namesake Japanese restaurant in Beijing.
Although I worry that high-end food in tasting menu format in residential Kitsilano (albeit in a modest room) might be a hard sell, there’s plenty of allure. Our server was seasoned, cheerful and a good conversationalist. On the demi menu, the first course is a kale salad over soycured steelhead trout, with beautiful pieces of sashimi-like trout. The main course had delicately battered and fried chicken and oysters over a mix of grains and charred broccoli, all delicious. And for dessert, hibiscus pear with ginger pastry cream and a meringue that looked like delicate fine china. Loved it.
The more extensive chef’s menu began with fresh, glistening kombu-cured snapper with tofu sauce, topped with ribbons of seaweed and herbs; mushroom chawan mushi was an earthy silky custard topped with fried enoki and other fried julienned bits. A “nori bun” arrived, a Cheng creation bridging brioche and Chinese bun topped with a savoury nori dough and served with spicy mayo. Her creations are meticulously crafted.
Then, pork chop slices strewn with black truffles and sides like cauliflower purée. A Dungeness crab noodle soup was delicious — the house-made ramen-type noodles, broth and fresh crab outdid dishes I’ve had at dedicated ramen shops.
Then, Cheng weighs in with two desserts. One is the same hibiscus pear pavlova as on the three-course menu and the other, a pistachio and honey-filled tuille cigar with a Valrhona hot chocolate with housemade marshmallow; my husband swooned.
We weren’t done yet. A plate of mignardise arrives for us, a fancy-schmancy restaurant move I didn’t expect — hazelnut almond financiers, grapefruit gelee and chocolate with malted chocolate ganache.
In the confined space, drinks are limited — there’s a couple of beers, a couple of cocktails and a small selection of wines (six reds, six whites) assembled by former Hawksworth sommelier Roger Maniwa.
“He tries to get obscure wines that goes well with Makoto’s food,” says Cheng. He wishes people would try more sakes but they’re not into it. “Hopefully, when we start wine pairings, include them,” she says.
It’s a little jewel of a place, and I do hope the tasting menu approach works in this location.