Tanyoto (Liang Court)

To celebrate Chinese New Year, we had a mini reunion gathering with our friends from China at 谭鱼头Tanyoto.

Ala carte steamboat was offered at Tanyoto, but we decided to order the ala carte cooked dishes instead. Appetizers wise, we started off with the 蒜泥白肉. This dish was mediocre, something that one can get at most Chinese restaurants like Putien and Lao Beijing. The 野菜煎饼 did not contain much fillings. It lacked in authenticity and tasted more like Indian prata. The 核桃木耳 was slightly spicy, with a refreshing taste, but similarly, it wasn’t all that impressive.

We ordered the highly recommended 潭氏剁椒鱼头. The Song fish head was rather small, not exactly worth the price that we paid ($28). It was also not cooked uniformly; there were certain areas where the fish meat was slightly undercooked. The main highlight of this dish turned out to be the gravy. Despite the huge chunks of chili making the whole dish intimidating, the gravy was not that spicy. We were given a plate of noodles to pour into the gravy after we had finished eating the fish head. The noodles soaked up the gravy and tasted absolutely fabulous. The gravy-soaked noodles definitely stole the limelight from the fish head. Yummy! Other main dishes we ordered include the 麻婆豆腐 which had a distinct 川椒 taste, giving this dish a very strong kick. The 泡椒珊瑚蚌 was chewy, fresh and cooked just right. The 鳝段粉丝 received mixed reviews. While our friends from China loved the dish, we felt that it was too oily. We preferred the Japanese Unagi to the 鳝鱼 as the latter was more dry. But one commendable thing was that they were very generous with the amount of 鳝鱼 in this dish.

Service wise, it was still a bit lacking. The restaurant spanned over 2 levels and perhaps there was a big crowd on the upper level, the staff seemed less attentive towards us. We had to request three times before plain rice was served to us. They also failed to lay the table with the proper utensils before serving the food. We were given chopsticks with no spoons, plates with no bowls. The service did improve towards the end of the meal where they would readily take the initiative to refill our pot of tea, without much prompting from us.

Visit http://foodphd.wordpress.com/ for photos!