Ethnic City - Ethnic.City: Café 101

Reopening a restaurant with a new owner and chef while keeping the same name, look, and style of cuisine is a risky proposition no matter where you fall on the dining spectrum. That’s exactly what the owner of the “new” Café 101 (5412 Buford Highway, Doraville, 770-458-8399) has done. Once the darling of critics and food lovers alike, the old Café 101 — whose reviews still grace the restaurant’s entrance — received a less-than-stellar health inspection score and, after months of decreased quality, closed. The new Café 101 is led by a Taiwanese chef/owner who hails from Los Angeles. Though much of the menu seems familiar — including the handful of Szechuan dishes — this incarnation’s energy has clearly been renewed.

The smaller plates hold the most interest. One such dish, the Taiwanese-style fried chicken, is virtuously greaseless with bite-sized pieces of white- and dark-meat chicken encased in a batter as light as tempura and fried to a beautiful crisp. A little dish of ground chili with the tiniest hint of smoke arrives alongside the chicken to scatter on for a little heat. Add it in increments or you’ll be coughing for a good five minutes. Pork wontons swimming in a sour-and-spicy bowl of sauce are tender, fresh-tasting and remain intact when plucked from the small bowl with chopsticks. Less successful or desirable dishes like the “green pea cake” — a gelatinous white substance made, chilled and formed into cubes, then draped in a spicy sauce — sound interesting enough, but fall flat.

Vegetable dishes abound, but the sticky batons of fried eggplant rendered soft like confit are both spicy and bright with a healthy dose of chopped fresh ginger. Sautéed snow pea leaves in garlic provide a fresh counterpoint should you order heavier dishes like the twice-cooked pork, thin slices of pork belly mixed with squares of fresh white cabbage. Plump salt-and-pepper shrimp are neither mealy nor greasy, but exhibit how deft the kitchen is at frying dishes. It’s hard to stop eating them once you start. A sizzling cast-iron bowl cradles plump pieces of chicken glossy with a dark, sweetish soy glaze and fresh basil. Large pieces of non-oil logged Szechuan-style fried tofu are covered in a spicy sauce. I’ve saved the best, however, for last. Dan dan noodles vary from chef to chef. Some are meaty, while others are drier. Café 101’s are heavy on the sesame paste and ground peanuts. Thick, fresh egg noodles with plenty of chew are comically long and pack some serious heat that’ll have you sucking air (in a good way).

The restaurant is packed on Saturdays and Sundays for the $6.95 buffet (it’s only offered those two days, and only from 11:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m.). It’s relatively small, but crowded with Taiwanese specialties, like braised beef belly and spicy pig’s feet, that you wouldn’t expect at your average Chinese buffet.