The Other Critics

Miller Finds Satisfaction, If Not Value, at M.Y. China and Hakkasan; Roth Is Won Over By Trick Dog

Hakkasan
Hakkasan Photo: Andrei Riskin/Grub Street

Opened within a week of each other and both offering “upscale” takes on Chinese cuisine, M.Y. China and Hakkasan naturally begged comparisons to each other. Virginia Miller does a side-by-side review of both, concluding “my assessment is mixed, each restaurant boasts strong points, but neither reinvents Chinese cuisine, which begs the question: are the prices worth it?” She enjoys the “atypical dim sum” dishes at Hakkasan, as well as the cocktails, saying that like its London counterpart she finds it “satisfying if someone else is paying.” At M.Y. China she recommends the scissor noodles with wild boar, and the dan dan noodles; and she says the dim sum here is also strong, if pricier than many other fine examples in town. She prefers, as at Hakkasan, the more unusual selections, like the spicy seafood dumplings, and the $18 black truffle dumplings with pork. [SFBG]

Meanwhile, Anna Roth provides the first formal review of Trick Dog (20th and Florida), which she says, with its Pantone color wheel cocktail list, could easily have been a “parody of a mixology bar,” but “The conceit works because the cocktails do.” She loves several of the paint-color-named cocktails, like the Pennies From Heaven and St. Elmo’s Fire, and says, “there’s a cocktail for every drinker” on the list. As for the food, she likes the brandade-coated Scotch egg, and the pork cracklings, as well as the hamburger on a hot dog bun, dubbed the Trick Dog, which she says is “greater than the sum of its parts.” All told, she says, “Trick Dog already feels like it’s been in the neighborhood for much longer than a few weeks.” [SF Weekly]

Miller Finds Satisfaction, If Not Value, at M.Y. China and Hakkasan; Roth Is Won