Preview of Amber Li's Restaurant

New restaurants often have soft openings before opening to the general public. Surrounded by family and friends, every layer of hospitality can be tested -- the kitchen, the front of house, and the management -- in an environment that simulates real-world dinner service, but with people who might be a little more understanding if the experience isn't quite yet perfect. But, of course, to feed people (often for free) and to pay employees isn't a small inconvenient expense. And even with a soft opening, it can still take a restaurant a month or two to really start humming with efficiency.

I knew going into tonight's dinner that Amber Li's Restaurant had only been open for a few days. This meant that there would likely be a few delays and perhaps the wrong soup being brought to the table, but I've developed a keen eye in spotting actual problems versus opening day jitters. Having learned of them from Lisa Abraham's weekly Food Notes section in the Akron Beacon Journal, I decided that a visit was warranted since she wrote that the menu consisted of, " traditional Chinese fare, sushi, hibachi-grilled and Japanese dishes." It was the traditional Chinese fare that caught my eye.

After work today, I hopped in the car and headed to 4195 Massillon Road, Green, OH 44685. The location of the restaurant was inside the Green Plaza, at the corner of Steese and Massillon Roads. There was ample parking in the common lot. If you wish to contact the restaurant, Amber Li's can be reached at 330-899-8856.

Here was a shot of the front entrance of Amber Li's:


Once inside the main door, I noticed the sushi bar located in the rear left of the restaurant with the remainder of the space broken up into tables and booths. I was surprised to see the restaurant only about one-third full as I figured a mention in Lisa's weekly food column would have packed the customers in. I was seated almost immediately, but noticed within moments of sitting down at my table that it had a severe wobble. I thought that perhaps as I settled in that I may have knocked something loose used to level it, but upon checking the floor, I found nothing. I decided to put up with the annoying wobble.

As I prepped my camera for the upcoming pictures, I began to people watch. It became immediately clear who the owner was, Amber Hazel. A native from China, she was the very stressed person running back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room, her diction being very harsh on one side of the kitchen door and much softer on the other. I sat quietly at my table for about ten minutes before anyone acknowledged me and asked if I would like something to drink. It took another ten minutes before my waitress finally stopped at my table to take my order. Twenty minutes is a bit too long for a restaurant that is only one-third full, so I'll have to chalk that one up to opening week jitters.

Fortunately, when I was sat, the hostess left me with the menu to peruse:


Sadly, the "traditional Chinese fare" for which I was hoping to dine upon tonight ended up being the same Americanized Chinese cuisine served at every other Chinese restaurant in Akron. While I can appreciate Americanized Chinese cuisine from time to time, I find it to be rather boring and often times way too sweet. Never heard of Americanized Chinese cuisine, gentle reader? General Tsao's (aka Tso's) Chicken is a perfect example. This is a dish that doesn't exist in China and has been fine tuned for the American palate over decades since its introduction.

All that said, I have come across a few really excellent General Tsao's Chicken dishes over the years and I figured I would give theirs a try to see if Amber Li's version was at least worth seeking out. I was happy to see the menu indicated that all entrees came with either steamed rice or a California roll. When my server finally stopped to take my order, I asked about this unusual choice as I had never seen it before.

"No, it's just the steamed rice that is available. Amber changed her mind about offering a sushi roll."

That was too bad since I was actually going to order the California roll in place of my steamed rice. C'est la vie.

So, in order to try a little bit from column A and a little bit from column B, here is what I actually ordered:

* Shrimp Eggroll
* Miso Soup
* General Tsao's Chicken, extra spicy
* Steamed Rice

Here was what came out of the kitchen about fifteen minutes later. First up was the General Tsao's Chicken with Steamed Broccoli:


And a plate of what I had originally thought was a California roll, but was actually a Spicy Shrimp roll:


No Shrimp Eggroll and no Miso Soup. As for the appearance of the sushi, I figured that Amber had okayed the substitution of the California roll for the steamed rice since I had asked my server about it. Assuming that the eggroll and the soup would be coming out of the kitchen shortly, I decided to go ahead and dig in to what was already in front of me.

I started with the sushi. As I ate my first piece, several thoughts went through my head. First, the California roll was missing the avocado. All I could taste were cucumber and what I thought was imitation crab. Second, California rolls don't usually have a spicy sauce associated with them. I figured that might just be a personal touch at Amber Li's. Third, and most surprising, the sushi rice was utterly and thoroughly bland. I even dissected one of the six pieces on the plate and tried the rice just by itself. Yup, steamed white rice, nothing added.

Why is this point so important? Su-shi literally translates to "vinegared rice." Sushi rice is made by adding rice wine vinegar, sugar, and salt to the rice after it is cooked. This gives the rice a bit of acidity as well as seasoning from the salt. Soy sauce applied at the table would not have helped in this case. Curiously, while dissecting the sushi piece, I also noticed that the imitation crab looked an awful lot like a piece of shrimp. That's because it was! What I thought had been my accompanying California roll for my General Tsao's was actually my server thinking I had asked for a Spicy Shrimp roll instead of a Shrimp Eggroll. D'oh! The final check confirmed my suspicions.

On to the General Tsao's Chicken. It actually wasn't all that bad. The chicken was fried until crispy; the sauce was a bit oily and sweet and could've used a bit of acid to balance the other flavors. The steamed broccoli was a nice touch, but the carrots and green peppers the menu description promised were nowhere to be found. I had asked for the dish to be extra spicy and the kitchen's response was simply to add more whole chili peppers to the dish. Not being a complete moron, I moved the whole peppers to the side of the dish. Overall, I would say this dish was about a medium spicy and not particularly incendiary.

Having finished my sushi and chicken, I realized that nothing else was going to come out of the kitchen for me. After asking for and receiving the check, I finally understood what happened with the Shrimp Eggroll / Spicy Shrimp roll mistake; however, I had still been charged for the Miso Soup. I pointed the mistake out to my server, who quickly removed it from the bill. I could've contested the Spicy Shrimp roll mistake (as the sushi was $6 and the eggroll that I had ordered was only $2), since I didn't correct the error when I first detected it, I decided to pay for it. The check, with tax, came to just under $18.

While there were some components from tonight's meal that I enjoyed, there was a LOT that needs to be improved upon. Quickly. If Amber Li's is running this inefficiently and with this many mistakes a month from now, customers will tire quickly and decide to spend their dining dollars elsewhere. While my personal preference in Chinese cuisine tends more towards the authentic side, if Americanized Chinese cuisine is your bag, once Amber Li's gets it right, this might be the place for you. Since I can get these flavors much closer to home, other than visiting again in order to re-review it, I personally wouldn't make the drive from Akron.

All The Chinese Classics At China Gourmet

When I first stumbled back upon Vacarro's Trattoria after a ten year gap, I was amazed at the transformation from what I remembered in the past. On the other hand, when I revisited childhood staple Angelina's Pizza some twenty years later, the pizza didn't quite live up to the memory. Falling somewhere in the middle, China Gourmet in Akron, Ohio has managed to not only survive since I first started going there decades ago with my grandfather, but has since expanded to add a sushi bar and an underground banquet room.

China Garden was located at 1971 West Market Street, Akron, OH 44313 and can be reached at 330-867-8838. Parking was in the lot surrounding the building. If you are traveling eastbound down Market Street, your best bet for navigating the traffic is to make a left at Pershing and then a right into the lot.

Having lived in Akron for so many years, I pass by the restaurant frequently as it is located directly across the street from Ken Stewart's Grille. So what was the reason I hadn't stopped until now? Honestly, my memory of the food being served at the restaurant wasn't particularly memorable. It wasn't a bad memory, per se, just not a stand-out one. The shape of the building indicated that it had been converted from a Wendy's many decades ago. The interior was pleasantly decorated with linen tablecloths and napkins, a slender white vase on each table with a single flower sticking out of the top, and nary a chopstick visible in the entire dining room. Some things don't change.

Here was a shot of the roadside sign outside the restaurant:

As soon as I walked inside, I was greeted with EXACTLY the same interior that I remembered from fifteen years ago. While I can't attest to colors on the wall being a match to my memory, the feeling it invoked was exactly the same. This time, however, I looked around at the other clientèle and was unsurprised to discover that the only people of Asian origin in the entire restaurant were the owner and the staff. This did not bode well for getting authentic Chinese dishes. When I finally started to peruse the menu, my suspicions were confirmed:

Having a wonderfully authentic Chinese restaurant in northeast Ohio like Wonton Gourmet has truly spoiled me. So much so that when I am firmly yanked back into Americanized Chinese food (which I, like so many other Americans, grew up on), I had to regroup to get my bearings. At six pages, the menu had a lot of the classics like General Tso's Chicken and Szechuan Beef, but since I at least wanted to attempt to find something a little more authentic, I had to scour the pages a little harder.

While I was looking at the menu, my server brought me the pot of green tea I had requested:

Sadly, only one tea bag had been used for the entire pot. This meant that the tea was quite weak until the very end of the meal when the tea bag had finally steeped long enough. Until that point, the liquid coming out of the pitcher's spout was nothing more than barely flavored hot water.

To get several tastes from tonight's menu, I decided to go with an appetizer, a bowl of soup, and one of the stir-fried dishes. For my soup, I skipped over the Wonton and Hot and Sour soups and decided to try the Vegetable and Bean Curd Soup:

The menu claimed that "all Chinese people eat this soup." The broth by itself was almost perfectly seasoned and had a slight vegetal taste to it. When I dug into the bottom of the bowl to retrieve the tofu and vegetables, I discovered that the "vegetable" portion of the title referred to fresh spinach and sliced green onions. It occurred to me that the vegetal taste of the broth was coming from the spinach itself. Sadly, when I got a spoon filled with not only broth, but also tofu, the barely underseasoned broth was now not salty enough to compensate for the unsalted tofu. Overall, this was a filling soup, but a little flat and two-dimensional. A drop or two of toasted sesame seed oil would've done wonders to the aroma and flavor.

While potstickers appear on almost every Americanized Chinese restaurant menu, only a few places do them well. Wonton Gourmet has set the bar high for me and I wanted to see how China Gourmet's version compared. Here were the potstickers with a soy and rice wine vinegar dipping sauce:

As you can see, gentle reader, the kitchen clearly spent some time making sure the bottoms were crispy:

These particular potstickers were filled with ground pork and ginger:

I only had two real criticisms on the potstickers. First, the casing was a bit doughy. Second, while I didn't expect the casing to be salted, I did expect the filling to be. It wasn't completely bland, but it was light on seasoning. I did enjoy how the ginger helped to cut through some of the fattiness of the pork, however. The dipping sauce served its purpose by adding some of the missing salt and acidity. These were definitely above average potstickers, but still a few levels below what you can get elsewhere.

After wading through page after page of non-authentic dishes, when I got to the "Pork" section of the menu, I was happy to discover an old friend, Ma Pa Tofu. Classically a spicy dish, when I asked my server about the spice level, she indicated it was already pretty spicy. I asked about my options for extra spicy. She indicated that she would not only turn the ticket in with "extra spicy" written on it, she would also bring out a dish of chili oil so that I could adjust it to my preference. Perfect!

After only a short time, she arrived with my entree:

Additionally, she brought me a medium-sized bowl of rice and the aforementioned dish of chili oil:

After loading up my plate,

I took my first bite. I held off on using the extra chili oil at first because I wanted to see how spicy the dish came out of the kitchen. "Extra spicy" at China Gourmet came out to about "medium" on my palate. This, as it turned out, was a nice level of heat as I could still taste the other components to the dish. While someone unfamiliar with a more traditional Ma Po Tofu might look at the picture of the entree above and say, "Where's the pork?", China Gourmet actually nailed the proportions correctly in that most of the protein on the plate was from the tofu, not the pork. China Gourmet's version also had water chestnuts in the mix, which I haven't had before. Overall, it was a decent rendition of Ma Po Tofu and even though I had eaten a bowl of soup and a plate of potstickers, I managed to get my way through about three-quarters of this plate.

While dessert was offered, I politely declined and asked for the check which, with tax, came to exactly $20. While tonight's meal was decent and would fit the expectations of 90% of Americans looking for "Chinese" food, to me the flavors just didn't pop like they did at more authentic restaurants. When I go out for any kind of cuisine, I want to be excited about the possibility of trying flavors that are foreign to me. The food tonight felt more comforting than exciting. In that sense, tonight's experience completely lined up with my last time dining here, some fifteen plus years ago. If this is the type of Chinese cuisine that you like, gentle reader, I think China Gourmet would make an excellent place for dinner.

For myself, however, I'd rather drive the forty-five minutes to Cleveland's Asiatown and experience some truly delicious and more exciting Chinese flavors.

Sushi On The Dais At Cilantro Thai And Sushi

I had heard a lot of good things about a local addition to the local food scene in Akron, Cilantro Thai and Sushi Restaurant. While I knew it was downtown, I had never really bothered to find out where until today. I had been hanging out with some friends when the idea of eating dinner came up. Naturally, they turned to me for a suggestion and when I asked them what type of food they were eager to try, Thai food came into the conversation. When I mentioned that Cilantro had been on my "Place To Eat" list for a while, they quickly agreed that we should head there tonight for dinner.

Cilantro was located at 326 South Main Street, Akron, OH 44308 and can be reached at 330-434-2876. There was no parking available specifically for the restaurant, but there was plenty of available curbside parking and since we had gone on a Sunday, it was essentially free since the meters weren't being monitored. As it turned out, the restaurant was actually only a few blocks south of the stadium where the Akron Aeros play and just a few more blocks away from the Lock 3 Park area.

Here was a shot of the front entrance:


As you open the door, a rather annoying electronic beep could be heard. Once inside the main doors, the entrance to Cilantro was on the right. Another set of beeps was heard once those doors had been breached as well. The first thing I noticed once inside the restaurant was how expansive it was. It had a real art deco, early to mid 1930's feel to it and in the middle of the restaurant, was the sushi bar on a dais. What I didn't realize at the time I dined at Cilantro was that this was the location of the old Piatto restaurant (now Piatto Novo at the Sheraton in Cuyahoga Falls). While you could definitely seat yourself at the sushi bar for a more authentic sushi experience, today we were in the mood for the Thai portion of the menu.

Speaking of the menu, here were snapshots that I took:







As you can see from the photos above, it was a combination of about half Thai and half Japanese dishes. I liked the fact that the Japanese portion of the menu wasn't just sushi. I rarely eat just sushi for dinner anymore and like you will see in just a bit, I more often order a few choice pieces as an appetizer.

I decided to start my meal out with two orders of nigiri sushi, two pieces per order:


Here you have both hamachi (yellow tail) and unagi (barbecued eel). As with most sushi, it was artfully and simply presented and it was incredibly fresh and tasty. Even the vinegared rice (which is what sushi actually means in Japanese) tasted recently made. Both types of seafood had a clean taste to them and it was clear that whomever was running the sushi bar knew what good seafood should taste like. I did use just a tiny bit of wasabi with the hamachi, but other than a light dip in some soy sauce, I ate them as they were plated.

Having finished our appetizers, I eagerly awaited my main course, a green curry with chicken. Why eagerly awaited, gentle reader? When I ordered it, I asked for the range of spiciness at Cilantro. Our server informed us that the dishes could be made from zero (0) to five (5). When I asked if five really was the hottest level, my server hemmed and hawed a little bit before admitting that there really was an additional level of heat, "Thai spicy." As I'm sure any long time reader of my blog already knows, I have employed that term "Thai spicy," in numerous Thai restaurants only to find out that for true Thai spicy food, in the end I always have to add extra superlatives to the phrase such as "extra Thai hot" or "extra extra Thai spicy."

Our waitress today assured me that "Thai spicy" was the hottest the kitchen would make it and she had never seen anyone actually order it that spicy since she had started working there. Still skeptical I would get the food at the right spice level, I went ahead and ordered it "Thai spicy." I'm glad I did.

Here was a shot of the curry I received:


Two things bothered me when this was coming to our table. First, either the kitchen was sloppy or our server was a tad uncoordinated because there was sauce all over the rim of the plate. I have a feeling that because there wasn't anything between the ceramic plate and the ceramic bowl in which the curry had been plated, the bowl had slid around a bit too much between kitchen and table. Second, I was concerned because there didn't appear to be a lot of red flakes in the curry, usually a good sign that fresh Thai chillies had been used.

Not to be deterred, however, I spooned some of the curry over the inverted bowl of steamed rice I had received with my meal:


As I took those first few tentative bites, I tasted the green curry, the coconut milk, and the intense heat from the chillies. Apparently the lack of red flecks didn't mean a whole lot because this baby was on fire with chili heat. This was exactly what I was after and after I offered my dining companions a bite (they ordered their dishes at a two), they politely declined figuring that they wouldn't be able to taste anything else after trying my dish. The curry itself was quite tasty and the chicken was cooked through but still tender.

Having finished about half of my curry and rice, I boxed up the remainder for a spicy late night snack later that day. Between my sushi appetizers and my green curry chicken, the bill came to just over $22 with tax. Given that I would get two meals out of it, I think for this level and quality of food, it was definitely worth the price. Up until this point, when I had been jonesing for Thai food, I had been going to Siamone's Thai Pub over by Springfield Lake. Knowing that I have another Akron restaurant where I can get my "Thai spicy" fix (with the additional benefit that Cilantro's menu offered far more dishes than Siamone's) for Thai food and with the quality of the sushi I had received tonight, I highly recommend that you give Cilantro Thai and Sushi Restaurant a try. I know that I intend to return very soon for another great authentic meal.

A Wonderful Culinary Discovery at Pacific East

While originally planning a dinner outing for a group of out-of-town college friends, I discovered that several of my friends expressed an interest in sushi. The fact that two of us had eaten the pristine sushi at Pacific East on Coventry Road in Cleveland Heights prior to this led me to suggest that we return for an encore meal. I have eaten at this location and at the location in the Eton Collective in Beachwood and I have always had wonderfully fresh and delicious sushi in both spots.

After ditching my car in the public parking deck in Coventry (which by the way, gentle reader, they have installed new parking meters that only accept quarters now ... don't do as I did and only realize this after putting in a handful of dimes wondering why no minutes were accumulating on the read-out), I walked up the road to 1763 Coventry Road, right across the street from Grum's Sub Shoppe and saw this awning outside of the restaurant:


Once inside, I sat down and waited for my friends to arrive. The first thing I noticed that differed from my last visit was the creation of a separate Malaysian menu:


In prior visits, there was always just one menu devoted to mostly Japanese dishes. A small portion of that menu was dedicated to a few of their Malay specialties. I was actually happy to see this new menu; it was replete with an exciting array of dishes that I had heard about in my various epicurean travels but had never had a chance to try. Along with the Malaysian menu, there was also the traditional Japanese menu:


Having originally picked Pacific East because of their sushi, I was now beginning to rethink my strategy a bit. Perhaps a combination of Japanese and Malaysian cuisines would be on my radar tonight. When my dinner companions finally arrived a few minutes later, they also made the same startling discovery. As a result, we ended up ordering a mixture of cuisines, but most of the ordering would be from the Malaysian menu.

My one associate decided to do a maki roll and nigiri starter. He ordered the eel maki roll and a piece of the uni nigiri:


Having had uni several times before, I could never understand why everyone always raved about. Honestly, the problem I had always had with uni was a textural issue. I won't go into what the issue I had was, but let's just say it reminded me quite a bit of the experience of having sinusitis. That being said, I had never even considered trying the uni at Pacific East before. Knowing how good the rest of the sushi was, I decided to give it one more try and piggy-backed an extra piece on my friend's order; the second piece of uni nigiri you see sitting on that plate was for me.

My friend went first and ate his piece. He confirmed that it was indeed very good uni. At least I knew that I now had the opportunity to try a piece of uni that had been positively confirmed by someone with a more educated palate than mine. I dipped the rice quickly in just a little bit of soy sauce and put the entire thing in my mouth. I chewed slowly to make sure I experienced the texture to its fullest and to allow the flavor to develop in my mouth. What was the verdict? I have to give props where they are due; this was by far the best version of uni I have ever eaten. I can also see why some people compare the texture of uni to foie gras. It has that same sort of mouth feel to it. The flavor was briny and fatty. Was I able to swallow the piece in my mouth? Absolutely. Would I ever order this again? The answer lies somewhere in the middle of "maybe" to "probably not". At least I finally knew what good uni was supposed to taste like.

Shortly after, my appetizer arrived, the chicken satay with peanut dipping sauce:


Having had this dish numerous times at Thai restaurants, Pacific East's version was good, but not great. The chicken had decent flavor and was nicely grilled. The peanut dipping sauce was a bit of a letdown for me though. You could definitely taste the peanut, ginger, and fish sauce flavors, but it really didn't have any zip to it. Granted, the menu indicated that it wasn't a spicy dish, so I can't fault them too much for delivering on that promise, but still, that would've really elevated this dish in my mind.

My dining companion who ordered the eel and uni appetizer decided to order the chicken rendeng:


Served with plain rice, this was quite good. The chicken was tender and flavorful and you could really get a nice sense of the lemongrass and coconut milk infused into the dish. The dish is marked as a "medium" spice level on the menu and that was how my friend ordered it. To my palate, this dish was more of a mild than a medium. For customers who can't do heat at all, this would definitely be spicy. For those with a more adventurous palate, you might want to ask them to take it a few spice levels higher.

I decided to order the laksa:


The menu describes the laksa as, "Noodles in full of flavors - slightly creamy infused with coconut milk, seafood, egg, tofu, chichen and bean sprouts, chili and spices." Interesting translation to English aside, this was a really lovely dish. The menu indicates that this is a "spicy" dish. Knowing my penchant for extremely spicy food, I asked the waiter if there were different levels of spiciness. He indicated that there really weren't, but he'd be happy to bring me a side of chili sauce so that I could adjust it myself. It turns out that the cook was happy to make it hotter for my taste and it came out already adjusted. I'd say the spice level was somewhere between medium and spicy. It was definitely spicier than my friend's chicken rendeng, but not so spicy that I couldn't taste the other ingredients in the dish.

The egg noodles were nice, sort of like ramen noodles. They were tender to the tooth and while you couldn't really pick up any of the egg flavor from the actual noodle, the dish was studded with hard boiled eggs to reinforce the flavor. The broth was a lovely mix of spicy and creamy; the coconut milk acted to reduce the spicy edge from the chilies. The seafood mentioned in the menu description actually refers to several shrimp that were in the bowl. These were a nice size, but they were a slight bit overcooked and just a touch rubbery. However, that is really the only criticism I have of the entire dish. It was quite delicious and I would order it again when I return. Actually, to be honest, the Malaysian menu is so thorough now that you could order from it the next twenty times you go to the restaurant and still not have worked your way through everything.

To our great surprise, what had initially been an outing for some wonderful Japanese delicacies morphed into an almost all out Malaysian culinary odyssey. I don't know of any other Malay restaurants in Cleveland, Akron, or Canton, so if you want to try out this wonderful cuisine (and I seriously suggest you should), give Pacific East on Coventry Road a try. And don't forget to get at least a little bit of sushi or sashimi while you are there, too.