Our Place

So tonight Sam and I went to a restaurant called Our Place located at 82nd and 3rd (roughly) for dinner. We started with the obligatory fried egg noodles which were some of the lightest and least greasy I have ever had. Also, the duck sauce was unusually flavorful and didn't taste sickly sweet like the stuff you get from a takeout place. Then we started with a steamed pork dumpling appetizer, which was very good. The dumplings were more what I am accustomed to with regard to wrapper:filling ratio. I have reviewed a few restaurants recently whose dumplings were all filling with a crunchy thin outside. The dumplings at Our Place had a breadier outside that was a bit sweet and added a nice mellow compliment to the pronounced flavors of ginger and scallion within the pork filling. After one bite, Sam and I both looked at each other with a surprised "holy moly this is SO much better than I was expecting" glance. He had the sauteed filet with mixed veggies, and I had the brocolli in garlic sauce, both with brown rice. Sam's was good, and tasted like chef started the sauce as a basic brown sauce and then decided to flip the whole thing on it's head with big bold favors and no oversalting. The meat was tender and the veggies were all perfectly cooked - hot throughout but very crunchy. My brocolli was also perfectly cooked and the sauce it came in was sweet, thick and a bit chunky with garlic pieces. I enjoyed the fact that the sauce was crafted in such a way that it enhanced the brocolli flavor not masked it. Just as importantly, my brocolli wasn't sitting in a lake of over salted soupy sauce getting soggy - you know what I'm talking about. Both entrees were very tasty. Although, since I am not so much of a red blooded male meat eater, I preferred the lighter and more delicate tastes of my dish, to the bolder, fleshier tastes of Sam's. The brown rice was ultra short grain, so it stuck together nicely in chopstickable chunks.

All in all, pretty damn good. The things to try are the pork steamed dumplings and the brocolli in garlic sauce, in my humble opinion. On the other hand, if you're looking for a carnivores delight, you can't go wrong with the filet with mixed veggies.

YUM!

xo