Uneven, but so stylish

Red-cooked rib worthy of national press; other dishes include hits and misses

Red-Cooked Beef Short Rib at the new Chinese-American restaurant Best Quality Daughter at the Pearl caught the attention of the New York Times last month, with an article that detailed its elaborate braise and traced cochef and co-owner Jennifer Hwa Dobbertin’s family restaurant history from Taiwan to San Antonio.

Here, she’s writing new chapters of that history with co-chef and co-owner Quealy Watson, her partner in the Pearl food hall kiosk Tenko Ramen and now Best Quality Daughter, which opened in November in the cottage-style former home of The Granary ’Cue and Brew.

That beef rib, a massive single bone as big as one of those dino ribs at a barbecue joint, is worth the national press. It showed up to the table like a rock star, draped in a mahogany gown of glaze that’s sweet, smoky and as aromatic as a spice bazaar and followed by an entourage of herbs, Bibb lettuce, a rainbow of pickles and sauce bowls. Tender enough to pull apart with chopsticks, the rib’s a DIY kit for ssamstyle lettuce wraps, enough for four people and more than enough to justify its $60 pricetag.

Beyond the showboat rib, the menu brought both surprises and solid standouts. Nobody in town makes anything like Thai curry baba ganoush, a massive platter of air-crisp rice chips still popping hot from the kitchen, served with bubbling eggplant curry that was nothing at all like baba ganoush, but who cares? It was lush and creamy and turned those rice chips into an Asian-style twist on chips and salsa I can get behind.

The fragrant richness of curry also swirled through a hybrid version of dan dan noodles, a dish of pasta with spicy ground pork that’s usually a study in the power and potency of chili oil.

But the lush curry gave it layers of sweet earthiness that both grounded it and let it fly. In a more familiar vein, salt-andpepper shrimp brought the simple pleasures of flash-fried shrimp, meant to be eaten tail and all, executed here with precision and a spicy, colorful dress of chilies and scallions, cilantro and lime.

The restaurant draws its name from a line in the film “The Joy Luck Club,” referring to the relationships between Chinese-American women and their Chinese mothers. It’s a solid premise for a restaurant with its roots in tradition and branches that go wherever they please. And it’s a beautiful spot, a total transformation of the

former barbecue shop’s log cabin aesthetic, crafted by some of the city’s best designers and architects.

There’s a Southern-style sun porch, an upholstered gossip den and a main dining room bathed in a rosy glow that’s both kitschy and comforting. You can play spot-the-landmark on the cool custom San Antonio wallpaper by the bar, itself a neon-lit blend of modernist boutique and meth lab.

From that bar comes cocktails employing plum wine, five-spice bitters and chrysanthemum syrup among other singular ingredients. The best of those cocktails was called Drinking Alone with the Moon, deploying Japanese

whisky liqueur and brandy to turbocharge the florals of plum and star anise. In this charmed setting, a rum-spiked Thai iced tea with tapioca boba pearls made an ideal after-dinner drink for a clientele that would rather hang at a bubble tea bar than a stuffy sitting room.

Best Quality Daughter lets you accessorize its conspicuously branded chopsticks, coasters and plates with solid, colorful dishes like deep purple Sichuan sticky

eggplant, flashy green gai lan Chinese broccoli all squeaky-fresh in tangy brown oyster sauce, even vegan potstickers made with Impossible Burger “meat” that tastes and feels like you’re not missing a thing.

But one accessory clashed with all the others. Shallots fried knobby and hard like salted shrapnel were sprinkled across an array of dishes, from gai lan to crab fried rice and miso ginger noodles to wontons, smashed cucumbers

and snap peas — a careless garnish that compromised everything it touched. Some it wrecked.

Some never stood a chance, anyway. Smashed cucumbers weren’t smashed at all, just sliced and overdressed with tahini and too much chili oil. Soggy shrimp wontons disintegrated on touch, and wok-charred snap peas were buried under so much Parmesan cheese and overdressed arugula that they failed in their mission to add a contrasting touch of green to the fat and fire around them.

The short, smart menu carried its Chinese-American mission with grace, for the most part. Crispy egg rolls got a creative spin with crab boudin. Fried shiitake mushrooms wore a golden coat of breaded armor with a refreshing basil yogurt dip. Mochi cheddar hush puppies had the heft and bounce of Southern spoon bread. And cashew chicken could walk the wok with the best Chinese kitchens.

For its style and strong chef lineage, Best Quality Daughter could do better on the way to best.

Photos by Mike Sutter / Staff Red-Cooked Beef Short Rib is a giant braised and glazed beef rib served with Bibb lettuce, herbs, sauces and house pickles at Best Quality Daughter at the Pearl.

Cocktails include Drinking Alone with the Moon (brandy, plum wine, Akashi Ume whisky liqueur and five-spice bitters), left, and a gin-and-tonic variation called Nightshades.

The menu at Best Quality Daughter, an Asian-American eatery at the Pearl includes, clockwise from left, salt-and-pepper shrimp, wok-charred snap peas and panang curry dan dan noodles.

Dessert at Best Quality Daughter means ice cream sandwiches made with lychee, left, and chocolate with peanuts sandwiched between fried steamed buns called mantou.