Datsun
380 Elgin St., Unit B, 613-422-2800, eatdatsun.com
Hours: Monday to Saturday 5:30 p.m. to “late,” closed Sunday
Prices: small plates $9 to $16
Access: restaurant is downstairs
Note: no reservations
From Kanata to Orléans, pan-Asian restaurants are plentiful — with six you get egg rolls, as we used to say. Why then is Datsun, which opened in late October, the Japanese-Chinese-Thai-Korean place with the big crowds and all the buzz?
Its location helps, and not just because it’s at the south end of bustling Elgin Street. More to the point is Datsun’s adjacency to its sister restaurant, El Camino, the thriving, medium-sized taco-centric eatery and bar that opened in the summer of 2013. Datsun is the pale-roomed, slightly more expensive yin to El Camino’s dark Mexican yang.
Most to the point is that the kitchens of both restaurants are run by chef-owner Matthew Carmichael, a veteran of some of Ottawa’s top kitchens, and chef de cuisine Jordan Holley. From my two visits to Datsun, the pair bring the same elevated panache that made El Camino’s tacos city-wide favourites to an array of Asia’s greatest edible hits.
Datsun chef de cuisine Jordan Holley
Now that Datsun is open and busy, you almost want to ask: what’s taken Ottawa so long to have this kind of food done this well?
The templates for not just Datsun’s concept, but also some of its calling-card dishes, have been out there for years in the culinary winds.
Would Datsun serve two kinds of Japanese ramen soup and steamed buns wrapped around slabs of succulent, hoisin-sauced pork, had the Momofuku empire of restaurants, which kicked off in New York in 2004, not gotten there first?
One wonders if Datsun’s chicken wings — plump, moist and tasting irresistibly of chili, fish sauce and honey as well as chicken — are indebted to the fish-sauce wings served at the trendsetting Thai restaurant Pok Pok in Portland, Oregon. Or if Datsun’s mini-burgers that feature luscious patties studded with chunks of shrimp are a nod to a similar item at Kazu, the best-loved of Montreal’s Japanese watering-holes.
After I’d eaten at Datsun, Holley wrote me that its food was “inspired hands down by Momofuku but also (by) Carmichael’s travels in South East Asia, cooking courses in Thailand and stages at a few Melbourne, Australia restaurants.
“It’s what and how we want to eat Asian food and (we) felt it didn’t exist in the city, packaged (in) the way we saw,” Holley wrote.
I’ll suggest that we not get too hung up about the provenance of Datsun’s food, and let globetrotting foodies fret about who makes the ultimate pork bun. As a consumer, I’m above all pleased by the quality of Datsun’s food and the attention to detail that Carmichael, Holley and their cooks clearly pay in their open kitchen. (The counter in front of it affords the best view of one’s soups, buns or curries being assembled.)
My favourite dishes from Datsun’s menu, which resembles a fill-in-your-order scrap of paper at your favourite dim sum joint, have impressed with big, layered flavours, or care and finesse, or both.
If you like food with a pronounced spicy edge, then I’ll direct you to the so-called Jor-Dan-Dan Noodles ($11), a bit of wordplay on Szechuan cookery’s Dan Dan Noodles. Datsun’s dish is not as fiery or pungent as its namesake, but it’s up there among my new cravings, with a decadently buttery, umami-rich ground pork sauce, a swirl of house-made chili paste and the fresh crunch of green onions.
“Jor-Dan-Dan” Noodles with chili bolognese at Datsun
The Szechuan-peppercorn tingle that I thought might have come with those noodles was to be found with Datsun’s chunks of fried eggplant, which were a little bit mouth-numbing (as advertised) but also garlicky, savoury and tasty.
Mouth-numbing eggplant at Datsun
Thanks to their multi-flavour assault, Datsun’s chicken wings ($9) were punchy and delicious, if uncompromisingly salty from their fish-sauce hit.
Spicy chicken wings at Datsun.
Datsun’s refined Thai-inspired curries prioritized meat or seafood over their respective sauces, in part because there’s been no rice offered to sop up the latter. Braised beef penang curry ($16) was quite good, the green seafood curry ($22) was even better thanks to the delicacy of the shrimp and scallops.
Braised beef penang curry at Datsun
Seafood curry at Datsun
Even more sophisticated was Datsun’s take on congee, the rice porridge that has sustained Cantonese peasants since ancient times. Datsun’s upscale version ($14) teemed with not just shrimp and scallops, but daikon and a poached egg too, while the rice gruel that is usually the guts of the dish was more like a lovely, lightly gingery sauce.
Seafood congee with dry XO sauce, egg yolk, peanuts at Datsun
To my surprise, the congee has not sold well, and would come off the menu, Holley told me. I get that the ramen and steamed buns are more popular, but still, the loss of the congee is a sad blow.
In a town that could use much more ramen, Datsun’s is certainly among the leading examples, with broth that has the right mouthfeel and springy noodles. Tonkotsu ramen ($15) was properly porky, and shio ramen ($14) had lucid flavour.
Tonkotsu Ramen with pork shoulder, pork belly and poached egg, at Datsun
Hyper-crispy chicken buns (two for $9) were what you want fried chicken to be, but with deluxe garnishes and in a steamed bun. Call me blasé, but I preferred the chicken buns to the more usual, no-frills pork belly buns (two for $9). A light sear and some add-on flavours would probably make me like the pork more.
Crispy chicken steamed bun at Datsun
Pork belly steamed buns at Datsun
Shrimp dumplings ($12 for two), with their sears showing, were well made. Better still were the more crafted, if small, shrimp burgers ($12 for two).
Shrimp dumplings at Datsun
Shrimp burgers with bonito flakes, lettuce, tasty sauce and toasty bun at Datsun
The only dish that I felt needed significant improvement was the papaya salad ($10), which despite its height and textural appeals, was let down by a dressing that lacked complexity. (I prefer the papaya salad at SEN Asian Cuisine, the subject of last week’s review.)
Papaya salad at Datsun
For dessert at Datsun, there was a single, but satisfying choice — a ball of deep-fried ice cream with sesame and coconut caramel ($6).
Deep-Fried Ice Cream with sesame and coconut caramel at Datsun
Service has been friendly and smart, with the wherewithal to caution about spiciness or distinguish between ramen and Ottawa’s more established Asian soup fave, pho.
It would be too much to ask an at-times beleaguered kitchen to dole out dishes so that a meal moved from the mild to the more spicy, but that might be optimal — or at least something for guests to figure into waves of ordering.
Flanked by the kitchen on the right and the bar on the left, Datsun’s room exudes minimalist cool. The tables at the front with the swivelling, industrial seating are coolest of all, but also the least comfortable.
So, is Ottawa’s best Asian food served blocks away from Chinatown and made by non-Asian chefs? The eyebrow-raising case could be made, although given Datsun’s limited menu, it is a ramen-versus-Peking-duck comparison.
At least it’s a toothsome debate to immerse yourself in, best of all over a plate of Jor-Dan-Dan Noodles.
phum@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/peterhum
Archive of Peter Hum’s recent restaurant reviews
PS: Here’s Holley on two matters…
On non-Asians cooking Asian food for Asians:
“We have to admit, we always get nervous when people from strong cultural culinary backgrounds, visit Datsun. I think with our culinary training andexperience we can feel confident in delivering a flavour that is familiar. For example, we had a friend bring her parents (old-school Chinese), and they were very skeptical to see a young, white, tattooed chef preparing their dinner. They ordered the congee, curry buns, etc… and were extremely impressed. She even told me she never eats congee anywhere other than her mother’s kitchen, not in Hong Kong even, but says ours is an exception.”
On authenticity:
“We respect and appreciate authenticity. But it will always be our interpretation of food.”
