Simbal is a restaurant that is the exact opposite of Alimento; a place seemingly dedicated to turning simple-looking soulful, rustic food into intellectualized gustatory experiences. Whether or not you like Simbal will greatly depend upon many things, how familiar with Asian cuisine in general you are, how intellectualized you like your food, and whether an automatic 20% tip is upsetting or not are among the top divisive issues. Both of the people I took to Simbal hated the meal overall, with one of them directly stating that it was the worst meal of his life. I think that’s going too far, but I would say that your average WASP could easily feel that way about the food here.
Not pictured, but I will say that cocktails were excellent, and custom requests were very well accommodated; wine was also reasonably priced, and quite good.
We began our meal with a Tuna and Meiji Tofu Tartare. The generous helping of tofu is quite custard-y in texture, and remarkably bland on the palate. Tuna also, unflavored, tasting only of itself, but well cut, and of seemingly good quality. As remarkably bland as the tofu and tuna were, the ponzu sauce and toasted sesame seeds were extremely piquant, delivering an umami punch that would be really far too much to bear on anything that was not completely bland. This stark juxtaposition of the hyper-bland with startling piquancy of sauce repeated itself in the meal. This was not a comforting dish, but rather one demanding careful contemplation of the fighting sensations occurring in one’s mouth with each bite.
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The only crowd-pleaser was the Crispy Sweetbreads in a funky fishsauce glaze with delightful pickled mustard greens. The sweetbreads were perfectly done with a fabulous, funky crust and custardy texture. The mustard greens functioned to tone down the intense funk of the fish sauce, and it worked well as a fun dish. A dining companion remarked that it was like high-end, more enjoyable orange chicken.
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Braised Pork Belly in Coconut Broth with Seasoned Egg was an ostensible riff on a Vietnamese tradition, and represents just how intellectual the food can get at Simbal. It seemed like a disaster of a dish at first because the pork belly was utterly devoid of flavor. I am still left wondering how it is possible to strip pork belly of every bit of its porcine flavor and leave only the essence of its textures intact. However, the coconut broth and egg were impeccably seasoned, offering delicate, yet sharp flavors against the total blandness of the pork belly. If you just leap into the dish hoping for the soulful fat, and tang of Vietnamese braised pork belly, you will surely reject the dish outright, but if you contemplate it slowly, you realize that the blandness must be purposeful; the broth and egg betray a deftness in seasoning ability after all; so the idea here seems clearly to be to create a version of a homey, hedonistic Vietnamese dish that forces the diner to carefully contemplate the odd textural, and flavor contrasts that have been turn topsy-turvy.
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Hanger Steak Tartare with fresh Sesame Bread was very pleasant, and veered into another more crowd-pleasing dish. Ostensibly seasoned as a larb, it tasted precisely like a great larb, with the hanger steak being remarkably tender. The sesame bread continued the trend of adding a sort of bland element against a more piquant element, standing in for sticky rice in this case, but being much more subtle in flavor. It was pleasant, if not necessarily earth-shattering for those who eat larb regularly.
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Finally, Bone Marrow with Chili Jam and Chinese Donuts was perhaps the only dish that did not really offer up the sharp contrasts. There is really nothing to fault in the dish as the bone marrow is nicely done, and when placed on the Chinese donuts adds meaty, unctuousness to the crispy, greasy base…a sprinkle of salt from the mountain on the plate, and it was tremendously hedonistic and unrestrained. I was very surprised by the dish given the other dishes, and found the bites enjoyable as they pushed the palate towards the extreme of savoriness, fattiness, and saltiness, but my dining companions were less enthused, and I am not entirely sure I could see ordering this again, as, generally, I like my bone marrow to have somewhat more of a counterbalance.
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A meal of extremes to be sure. I find myself unable to say that the cooking is bad at Simbal, yet I have no desire to return, and I consider myself fairly into intellectualized food. The process seems to have lost much of the direct soulful gustatory heft of the comfort dishes that are remodeled here, but perhaps I just don’t understand this type of comfort. Perhaps all of these dishes are really merely versions of Asian dishes I am unaware of in their natural habitat, but then I would wonder about whether they are better than in their natural environments. Maybe I’ve missed the point entirely, but to me the experience felt more like taking a midterm than it did eating a dinner. Nevertheless, I am sure that somewhere out there, there are people that will be delighted by this food.