ABOVE Fall salad with Asian pears, roasted golden beets, radish, butternut squash vinaigrette, whipped Laughing Cow Cheese, rice powder, lemon verbena and Thai basil. Whew. BELOW Kingfisher’s Vietnamese coffee flan, lighter than the Mexican version most locals know, with Maldon salt-miso cream and coffee syrup.
At the long, oval bar anchoring the center, there are craft cocktails with various Asian riffs, like a Vietnamese Spritz with jujube and lychee; a gin sour with banana and lemongrass; a “Saigon Moped” with gin, debittered bitter melon, sesame leaf, and lime. The smoked duck is the marquee entree that sells out every night—dry-aged for two weeks, glazed with palm sugar and pepper, sliced out on a massive dish, with enough salty- sweet meat to feed four. I’ve had it perfect and I’ve had it a tad dry. The diver scallops are tragically good, lightly poached in salt water, then served in a broth made of pineapple juice and fish sauce. That combo sounds like a prank, I realize. But break down the elements—sweet, salty, acidic—and that’s the formula for most perfect dishes on the planet. A dish of roasted eggplant shines on a duo of sauces—a vegan seaweed- mushroom XO sauce and vegan demi. The biggest hit of the menu, though, is the porridge. Bautista’s congee. Asian grits. A humble dish that many remember eating their whole lives, but never like this. At the risk of offending moms the world over, Bautista’s does what some of the best restaurants do: take a dish you have an emotional connection with and make it better than you ever remembered. His rice porridge is topped with chanterelles, crispy garlic, garlic chives, egg yolk for richness, and housemade sambal. Mix it up. It’s soul-resuscitating stuff. My chief complaint about Kingfisher has to be the thing that makes it so compelling—yeah, the fish sauce. With great power comes great responsibility. Like anything with such a potent taste (truffles, kimchi, blue cheese), it can be a tad exhausting.
For dessert, Bautista does a riff on a silky jiggler almost every culture has a version of: flan. Mexican versions tend to be heavy, with condensed milk; the Vietnamese version is light, with Filipino flan right in the middle. Kingfisher’s Vietnamese coffee flan splits the difference between the latter two, resting the custard in a pool of coffee syrup with a quenelle of Maldon salt-miso cream. Light and dark in the same bite. One thing’s for sure. The arrival of this restaurant has kicked off a very important question: What is the best restaurant located in a strip mall next to a 7-Eleven? With both Kingfisher and Sushi Ota, the city’s Slurpee-adjacent food scene has never been so alive.
28 FEBRUARY 2023
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