Cheap Eats - Right on ‘cue ...
... but wrong on dim sum at BBQ Corner II
There’s a War-of-the-Worlds air of panic in the Asian Square Shopping Center parking lot. It’s Sunday morning, and a fleet of mini-vans steadily discharges frantic Asian families who scurry about with an urgency usually reserved for hurricane evacuations. A parade of cars circles the lot, searching desperately for places to park. Harried drivers back out of spaces to negotiate and renegotiate the blacktop’s faded white lines. Groups pour in and out of BBQ Corner II, where the manic atmosphere continues.
Fire drill: While other restaurants in the strip mall stand half-full, BBQ Corner is packed, thanks to its alluring display window where jewel-skinned roast ducks, soy sauce chicken and roast pig sparkle. Behind the Chinese restaurant’s fingerprint-smudged doors and windows, a bumper-car convoy of dim sum carts weaves among the tables. Few diners linger for postprandial chats: Although the dining room is far from unpleasant, the eatery does lend itself well to eating and running.
Ho-hum dim-sum: It’s hard to resist the dim sum, a buffet of sorts for lazy types. Dumplings, buns and rolls float by on carts, and each portion of which costs a mere $2 or $3. Granted, the restaurant’s name should be clue enough about what’s best to order, yet one expects the Chinese brunch to be at its freshest on Sunday, unquestionably the restaurant’s highest-volume day.
Almost all the dim sum, however, tasted as if it had been prepared far in advance, then reheated and stacked on carts. The shrimp-stuffed grilled green pepper was lukewarm and coated in the same coagulated brown sauce that formed a jelly around a steamed bean curd roll. The steamed shrimp rice noodle, usually a light exception to the many filling dim sum dishes, was of an atomic heaviness. What should have been a delicate rice noodle was an eraser-like sheet as thick as a carpet wrapped around small, flavorless shrimp. Fried items, such as the flaky-and-dense deep-fried taro puff, were a slight improvement from the other dim sum offerings, which were all unrelentingly porky in flavor. Yet BBQ Corner does deserve credit for not overdosing the food with “Chinese sugar,” aka MSG.
Meat’s the treat: Like so many Chinese restaurants, BBQ Corner is awash with close to 200 menu items (not including dim sum) and most are mediocre at best. The restaurant’s focus, in both title and reality, is clearly its six barbecued meats, of which the roast pig and duck are superlative choices. The roasted pig is heavenly: Five-spice pork so tender it melts on the tongue is capped with a layer of creamy fat and crunchy crackling skin. Mahogany, honey-and-soy lacquered roast duck is sweet, rich and falling off the bone. Salt-baked chicken is artfully done, with tawny crispy skin and juicy flesh. The barbecue selections are an excellent value, each priced at $4.85 for a single portion, $8.95 for a combination of two meats and $10.95 for three. These offerings display the care and skill not lavished on other dishes. Skip the dim sum temptation and go straight for the prize. At BBQ Corner, it’s all about the meat.