SoSo Food Club delivers more than advertised
SoSo Food Club builds the spiciness during the meal, writes Amy Pataki.
Talk about underpromising and overdelivering.
With mediocrity built into its name, SoSo Food Club sets expectations low. The new Chinese restaurant’s website promises “decent” dumplings and “okay” drinks.
“I grew up eating in restaurants with legendary, famous or excellent in their names. We thought it’d be fun to poke fun of that,” says Hong Kong-raised co-owner Nancy Chen (Otto’s Bierhalle).
Thankfully, SoSo proves better than adequate (although if it really were mediocre, the headline would write itself ). Its take on the food of Szechuan, Xi’an and Shanghai has grace, guts and transcendent handfuls of chilies.
Not for nothing is SoSo backed by a consortium of event planners, marketers and concert lighting installers. The group — Daniel Tal, Thomas Masmejean, Konrad Droeske, Matt Eckenweiler, Nav Sangha, Steve Goldby and Sarah Brown-Duncan — pooled their talents to turn a former sports bar into a trippy space that begins with a neon entrance arch and a pawn shop sign from the set of 2012’s Total Recall.
Beyond that is the bar and dining room, a showcase of teal, pink and chrome. Chen says it evokes Chinese movies such as
Millennium Mambo and 2046, plus the pink-and-green building she grew up in. I say they could film a Miami Vice reboot here, what with the potted palms and Cesca cane chairs I haven’t sat in since telephones had cords. The pink is every- where: menus, chopsticks, even the special-order bathroom fixtures.
Under all the programmable LEDs lies good service. Staff are quick to change plates and cutlery between dishes. They smoothly move walk-in customers from the bar holding area to a newly vacant table (but not the circular window booth, which always seems to be reserved).
Servers accurately describe the food-friendly wines and know to let them breathe after opening. Credit to bar manager Lia Said (ex-Bar Raval) for unearthing so many matches, uncommon in a Toronto Chinese restaurant.
Jasper Wu, 33, is in charge of the kitchen. He earned kudos at Parkdale Asian restaurant Miss Thing’s, where he made his own hoisin sauce and showed a dab hand at fried rice.
Here, Wu pickles lotus root and bamboo shoots ($5) for a relatively meek starter and bakes the bread wrapping spiced braised pork belly ($8), called “Chinese hamburger” on the menu.
The goal, Wu says, is to “open people’s minds. I want them to experience Chinese food outside of Chinatown.”
So start the Szechuan way with cold dishes: Winged beans and sliced cucumbers in simple soy dressing ($7) or shredded squid and shaved fennel ($13) united by aged Shanxi vinegar. Both are gentle preludes to the fiery delights beyond.
Chilies certainly play a role at SoSo, as do mouth-numbing Szechuan peppercorns. They converge in lamb with spinach noodles ($17), a dish whose epic spiciness lands in the back of the throat like bottled-up emotion. The wide noodles are chewy in the right way, woven through fried meat, cumin, green onions and bean sprouts. They are too good not to finish, better than the somewhat gummy dan dan noodles ($16, with $1 going to Meals on Wheels).
But SoSo offers more than hot peppers.
Yes, hot and sour soup ($8) has enough fermented Thai bird’s eye chilies to make the nose run. But it also tastes wonderfully of dried mushrooms. True, cold steamed chicken ($9) is dabbed with chilli soybean paste but the sweetness of cooked beets and goji berries on the plate still come through. And while a whole deep-fried sea bream ($34) is topped with fresh red Holland chilies, you are just as likely to register the julienned green onions and ginger in the dish, as well as the black bean sauce on the steamed clams ringing the firm fish.
Wu does three versions of Szechuan’s famed mapo tofu, including a vegan one with chickpeas and shiitakes.
The $32 lobster variation doesn’t deliver on the price tag. Cubed tofu outstrips the paucity of tail and claw meat from the one-pound lobster, yet the cost is more than double that of SoSo’s standard ground pork rendition.
As the meal goes on and the spiciness builds, one welcomes the blandness of polished rice ($3). There’s also the mercy of the Not-Really Buddha Basket ($15), a crisp-creamy taro nest perfumed with star anise and holding a tumble of cauliflower, corn, tiny green Chinese olive leaves and garlic. Much garlic; even more laces the daily stirfried vegetable ($9) of baby bok choy.
You’d think dessert ($8) would be a respite from the chili heat. And it is, at first.
Last month, Wu was poaching loquats, so-called Chinese apricots, in honey syrup perfumed by star anise and cinnamon. (Apricots now replace loquats.)
The fruit was light and subtle and absolutely refreshing, until I ate a piece of candied ginger.
I felt the burn for 15 minutes.