We both liked Kar Son and recommend it. It’s not going to blow you away—it’s not “must try”—but it’s our favorite Chinese restaurant outside the SGV. All five dishes we tried were good and at a consistent quality level. We liked that the dishes tasted light on oil (but otherwise pretty standard preparations). No liquor or wine license yet. They offer only two teas—“green” and “black”—but the green tea turned out to be good quality jasmine.
p.s.: the dishes marked vegan are actually vegan optional (the default mapo tofu has meat). I wouldn’t be surprised if even the vegan mapo tofu has chicken broth.
I enjoyed a delicious lunch at Kar Son yesterday. The cooking felt earnest and focused. Wok hei in my Chinese sausage fried rice took it to another level.
Chef Son and I spoke for a bit. Super nice guy. He hails from HK, but is skilled in many other Chinese repertoires in addition to Cantonese cuisine. He is aiming for a more traditional approach to the menu here, although he has space to interpret certain dishes through his own lens, as his terrific sweet and sour pork exemplifies. As for location: Why ROW? Well according to the chef, he actually tried to open elsewhere Downtown, but ROW offered him the best space and accommodations for the extreme high-heat traditional wok setup which he desired. This place reminds me of what Chef Ryan was doing at Needle, but in a bigger edifice. Best of luck to the team at Kar Son!
They said they were out of the branzino but instead had steamed seabass. I think it was a whole “black seabass” that was rubbed with Shaoxing rice wine, nicely steamed, seasoned with soy sauce, and then covered with scallions that were “sizzled” by pouring hot oil over them. Basically, this recipe: Steamed sea bass with ginger and spring onion/Qing zheng lu yu æ¸…è’¸é±¸éš | Matching Food & Wine
Everything I know about Chinese cooking I learned from Fuchsia Dunlop.
Went last weekend. Quality and pricing is solid for the area. I live super close so looking forward to slowly trying more. Chef/staff super friendly. Would skip the XLB and fried milk.
Went today. They were out of fish. We left and went to Kato. I was a little pissed. Not just about that but also they charged me for the tea. See, if I had known you were out of the two fish dishes on your online menu, I would not have come in the first place. So you shouldn’t have charged me for the tea; you should have apologized for not having staple menu items. And now I’m never coming back to your 2/3 empty restaurant. But congrats on the $7.
Dinner last night for 3 people: cucumber salad, small chongqing chicken, hot & sour soup, mapo tofu, dry fried string beans, dandan noodles, steamed branzino. sparkling tea.
the restaurant was pretty buzzy when we were sat around 730: a very large party was just leaving; another ten top was getting into some birthday cake – overall doing a nice business for a saturday night.
It’s not going to blow you away—it’s not “must try”
and if you can’t get to the SGV, it’s probably the best you’ll find in the city. the cucumber salad was the only real let down, nothing compares to the cucumbers at Luyu.
