Ching’s Kitchen
641 Somerset St. W., 613-233-6888 or search for Ching’s Kitchen on facebook.com
Hours: Tuesday to Thursday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Sunday noon to 9 p.m., closed Monday
Prices: snacks under $10, Japanese plates up to $17, Taiwanese dishes up to $13, Korean dishes up to $14
Access: steps to entrance
Usually by my final visit to a restaurant, I’m beyond the need to scope out the dishes sent to neighbouring customers, while wondering whether they’ve ordered the really good and interesting stuff.
But there we were at Ching’s Kitchen on Somerset Street West last week, craning our necks to identify items at other tables.
Two young Asian women were sharing warm bubble tea and something warmer still, bubbling away in a hot pot. Next to them, two more young Asian women were eating, as a server informed us, oden hot pot, a Japanese dish that floats fish cakes in broth.
I’d plumbed Ching’s menu over three previous visits since August, but never ordered the oden hot pot or the warm bubble tea. Probably 20 dishes in — good thing that Ching’s dishes are so affordable — I’m still pondering what the eatery does best.
Opened in June, Ching’s replaces Ju Xiang Yuan, which specialized in Northern Chinese food. The food at Ching’s is equally intriguing, with pages of its menu dedicated to Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean dishes.
The chef, I was told, is in fact Taiwanese. Indeed, the menu’s first two pages list “snacks” beside a photo that shows Taipei’s Shilin Market building, a mammoth attraction for night-market street-food eaters.
What I’ve had from those and other pages has tended to be simple, direct and hearty, with little of the Asian-fusion accommodations that make similar dishes more appealing to raised-in-North-America palates. There are also a few Japanese items that have become trendy (pork-broth ramen), others that might (kushiyaki, meaning grilled meats and seafoods on skewers), and basic, filling fare, such as deep-fried pork cutlets on rice.
In short, this was the stuff of Asian night markets and short-order cooking, not more crafted and nuanced dining. There were dishes that we would order again and others that impressed less, sometimes because of a shortcut in the kitchen.
On my final visit, we began with new additions to the picture-rich menu, diving right into some deep-fried fare. Taiwanese deep-fried chicken was piping hot, thickly battered and heavy, but the dark meat was moist, tasty, and made more punchy with slivers of potent chilies. Deep-fried squid, drizzled with mayo and a dark, savoury sauce, was nicely flavoured but also less than hot, un-crisp outside and overly chewy inside.
Taiwanese fried chicken at Ching’s Kitchen
Taiwanese fried squid at Ching’s Kitchen
On other visits, other deep-fried starters were better, including: a big, dark, well-sauced disc of okonomiyaki, the savoury Japanese pancake, flecked with cabbage and squid; agedashi tofu (cubes of deep-fried tofu); some reasonably good, albeit unseared, gyoza; and Taiwanese popcorn chicken, which were more crispy, nugget-sized and boneless.
Okinomiyaki at Ching’s Kitchen
Agedashi dofu at Ching’s Kitchen
Gyoza at Ching’s Kitchen
Popcorn chicken at Ching’s Kitchen
The deep-fryer did the trick too with a pork katsu don cutlet, served on rice. Another Japanese “on-rice” dish, curry gyu don, was less pleasing because its shaved beef was, beneath its mild curry, dry and flavourless. Taiwanese braised pork on rice featured morsels of fatty pork belly, plus funky preserved vegetables.
Pork katsu don at Ching’s Kitchen
Gyu don beef curry at Ching’s Kitchen
Braised pork with rice at Ching’s Kitchen
I had high, but misplaced, hopes for slices of pork cheeks in a sweet-hot sauce. Elsewhere, I’ve had, and loved, pork cheeks, cooked to sumptuous tenderness. But the pork cheeks at Ching’s were more in line with statements that I’ve read affirming that the Taiwanese palate prizes chewiness.
Pork cheeks at Ching’s Kitchen
Kushiyaki appealed in principle but didn’t knock us out. We hoped, perhaps naively, for something more refined but received something rugged. Various items — octopus, chicken wings, okra, beef, tofu and shishamo, a saltwater smelt — were uniformly slathered with miso and not especially tasty.
Assorted kushiyaki (Octopus, chicken, okra, tofu, beef, shishamo) at Ching’s Kitchen
Pork tonkotsu ramen here was just OK, lacking the finesse of the soups served at a ramen specialty shop. Dan dan noodle ramen, uncomplicated but satisfying, split its components into separate bowls — so-so noodles, long-cooked pork broth and ground pork in a thick salty gravy topped with chili oil.
Tonkotsu ramen at Ching’s Kitchen
Dan dan noodles/ramen at Ching’s Kitchen
Taiwanese beef noodle soup was a robust bowl of humble, long-simmered, vaguely sweet, beef shank in a full-flavoured but simple broth, with noodles and bok choy. The beef sukiyaki at Ching’s seemed almost like a Japanese analogue to that soup, but with more of that unappealing shaved beef, tofu and a soft-boiled egg.
Beef noodle soup at Ching’s Kitchen
Sukiyaki at Ching’s Kitchen
The shaved beef appeared again in Taiwanese beef with satay sauce and noodles, which, while marked spicy on the menu, tasted mostly just of curry powder. Chicken teriyaki with udon noodles had scant teriyaki flavour, but the chicken was toothsome. The rustic Taiwanese dish of chicken chunks cooked with ginger and onion had good flavour, but entailed a lot of grappling with bones.
Beef fried noodles with satay sauce at Ching’s Kitchen
Chicken teriyaki with udon noodles at Ching’s Kitchen
Taiwanese style chicken with ginger and onions at Ching’s Kitchen
We tried just one of Ching’s half-dozen Korean dishes — japchae, the stir-fried noodle dish, which struck us as coarsely prepared.
Japchae at Ching’s Kitchen
Desserts, including various vanilla- and green-tea flavoured ice creams and the like, are not made in-house, we were told. We tried a slice of tea tofu cheesecake, and it wasn’t sufficiently thawed. A “cheesecake-sickle,” my friend cracked.
Tofu cheese cake at Ching’s Kitchen
The restaurant, nicely and woodily renovated, is licensed, and offers just a few imported and domestic beers, several sakes and house red and white wines. Service has been attentive, but it would be great if servers could be a bit more proactive in explaining dishes to Taiwanese-food newbies.
So, it turns out there’s much to discover at Ching’s, from hits to unexciting dishes to flubs. Culinary explorers wanting unpretentious Asian fare might enjoy a visit.
phum@postmedia.com
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