Another dish I’ve never seen before but will order again is the hot-and-sour sliced potato with chili peppers ($7.25). The potato is served in long shreds with a slightly undercooked texture that makes it seem like a brand new vegetable — a kind of turnip, perhaps. The flavor is mostly from the fresh green chilies.
The white rice at Zoe’s is especially good. It’s fragrant as well as starchy and a little sticky, and that supports the food. It was especially good with the stir-fried vegetables of the day ($7.95) when I picked the baby-cabbage version. This was a simple stir-fry of baby bok choy, sliced garlic, salt, and oil, but it was a magical complement to the rice. The veggies resolved into rich, spinachy bites of leaves; crisper, sharper-flavored bites of stem; and (optional) very sharp bites of sliced garlic. What might have seemed like excess oil made the rice into something as rich as fried rice. Eggplant with garlic sauce ($7.25) was another vegan winner: slices of lavender eggplant with water chestnuts, bamboo-shoot slices, green bell pepper, and a lot of wood-ear mushrooms. The sauce is sweet-and-sour and hot.
What makes Zoe’s a little tricky is that not everything on the menu is as good as the best dishes. On an earlier visit, ordering peapod stems on that same stir-fry-of-the-day brought a plate of stringy, stemmy whatever swimming in grease. Ma po tofu ($7.25), another Sichuan classic, was only fair, with plenty of ground pork and hot-pepper flavor, but without the characteristic mentholated flavor of Sichuan peppercorns, which are again being imported. A fish-head hot pot ($7.95) was too bland. The broth, which initially tasted like dishwater, improved as it cooled and picked up meaty, fresh-fish, and ginger flavors. And the fish head resolved itself into bone-in cheeks and tongue, the latter mostly one piece that looked like a chunk of boiled beef fat, but had the subtle and exquisite lightness of marrow, or perhaps the codfish tongues in the old New England dish of cheeks and tongues. The rest of the filling was a lot of tasteless, soft tofu cubes. I can imagine an evening when this is the perfect soup, but not after a spicy appetizer.
The only dessert offered is factory-made fortune cookies, and hot tea is not served. Service is quite good, however. Both my servers let me order weird things without comment, and returned with accurate orders. Take-out is done quickly and packed effectively. Eating in, you’re in pretty basic surroundings: green-marble laminate on the lower walls, aqua paint above, with plastic tablecloths. The dining room is a happy place, with a reassuring mix of young Asian-Americans, savvy neighbors, and apparent regulars who banter with the servers.
Zoe’s Gourmet Chinese Cuisine, 289 Beacon Street, Somerville | Open Sun–Thurs, 11:30 am–10 pm; And Fri & Sat, 11:30 am–11 pm | AE, DC, DI, MC, VI | No Liquor | No Valet Parking | Access Up One Tall Step To One Table; Five More Steps To Most Tables | 617.864.6265
Email by author
Robert Nadeau:RobtNadeau@aol.com
