SECOND TIME AROUND: Zoe’s in Brookline is better than the original in some ways . . . and not in others. |
There were extreme reactions to the news that Zoe’s, which has another location in Somerville, was taking over Shalom Beijing (formerly Shalom Hunan). The Shalom customers were bitter about losing a glatt-kosher restaurant. The distant fans of Zoe’s were ecstatic to be getting their favorite dishes close to home. My own reaction, after four visits, is more mixed. What Zoe’s kitchen did well in Somerville, it does even better here. What it did badly, it does worse — such as neglecting more approachable Chinese-American dishes. This matters more in a larger restaurant likely to attract a range of customers than in a 10-table storefront, like their Somerville location, where cult customers can fill the place every night. I view it as immoral to offer dishes that the kitchen doesn’t at least try to execute well. More importantly, popular dishes could fill up the children of sophisticated customers, or they could be first steps for customers who will work up to the tripe with cilantro or the lamb with cumin. It can be off-putting, even in sophisticated Brookline, to go to a Chinese restaurant where the fried food isn’t especially good. Squid with salt and pepper ($9.50), which was over-breaded in Somerville, was almost all breading on an early visit here. Actually, there are some decent entry-level dishes at the new Zoe’s, but you have to pick and choose. The “lions-head pork meatballs in clay pot” ($9.50) sounds scary, but it’s three excellent gingery meatballs in a broth with some five-spice flavor and Napa cabbage: solid winter comfort food. General Gau’s shrimp ($11.95) were 10 very decent fried shrimp in a-lot-but-not-too-much breading and a sweet-sour-tomato sauce with a bit of red chili. On the lunch buffet ($6.95), the fried smaller shrimp in sweet-and-sour sauce were at least Chinese-American average. I’m not recommending this or any Chinese buffet — Indian food does well on buffets, Chinese food never does. But I checked it out to scout the more commercial dishes, and the scouting was otherwise pretty discouraging: mediocre crab Rangoon ($5.50), overly breaded chicken fingers ($5.50) and General Gau’s chicken ($9.50), and pretty good stir-fried green beans ($7.50). But the chicken wings ($5.50) and spring rolls ($3.50) — no way.
In fact, on one early visit, even some favorites from the Somerville Zoe’s weren’t as good. The stuffed tofu crêpe with vegetables ($4.95), a hot appetizer in Somerville, was here served cold and had a sour, over-the-hill tang. (My server gets points for asking me about the untouched dish, checking my complaint, and crossing it off the check.) The eggplant with garlic sauce ($7.50) wasn’t bad, but it seemed to lean harder on the hot sauce and less on the fresh slices of Asian eggplant than I remembered. Tea-smoked duck ($12.95) was still plenty smoky, but breast pieces were dried out.
