On a Mission (Chinese Food)

My parents apparently had a better offer for Friday lunch, so I rounded up a few food-minded coworkers to try one of SF's latest It restaurants, Mission Chinese Food. Recently profiled in the New York Times and hailed by the SF Chronicle, the chef has taken his four-star restaurant skills and opened a "dive" Chinese spot. It should come as no surprise that chef Danny Bowien's focus is on organic, top notch ingredients.

After I passed around the menu to my four coworkers for their choices, I ordered the five dishes I wanted ("gee, I have NO idea what happened to your boring chicken order!!!" Suckers.). We/I ordered five dishes total, which was more than enough for four males and a female with a male's appetite. We capitalized on their free delivery policy and had the goods dropped to our office.

The consensus was that the Broccoli Beef Cheek and the Sizzling Lamb Cumin (both $13 each) were the return-worthy dishes. In each, the meat falls apart by the touch of a plastic fork. And in all the dishes, the main attraction is accompanied by unsuspecting ingredients (the beef had huge chunks of oysters while our "Thrice cooked Bacon" had thick chunks of tofu skin and rice cakes).

Mission Chinese Food allows you to get adventurous. I ordered the Red Braised Pig Ear Terrine and I swear, the only reason people won't try it is because of the word "ear" (but will happily dive into a cheek or belly...). I ordered the ears because of the transitive property I learned in junior high: it comes from a pig, and a pig is good, so the ears must be good. I envisioned crispy and salty; I got chilled and slimy. The ears had the texture and consistency of ahi grade tuna and lacked the animal's trademark saltiness. I wouldn't order it again but glad I tried it.

The dish I thought I'd enjoy most - thrice cooked bacon - was good but the bacon was so chewy I almost couldn't swallow it. The bacon tasted more like ham to me, which, if I wanted ham - I would have ordered ham. Like the ears, not a miss, but just not what I was expecting. Lastly, the Mongolian long beans (our "healthy" choice) were very, very spicy - and more of a vehicle for grease and garlic than anything else.

Mission Chinese Food is a conundrum. On the one hand, it is in every way like stereotypical Chinese food: cheap, large portioned, greasy, free delivery, and has you running to the bathroom and reaching for the Gas-X for hours. But there were those few bites of meat - namely, the beef and lamb - that I know I wouldn't find anywhere else. This, and the ingenuity of combinations hinted at something more high-class, which I suppose is the influence of the chef's fine dining background. This leads to me a more philosophical issue: should any aspect of Chinese food resemble fine dining? Nah. There is a time and a place for that - and Chinese Food isn't one of them.