Poorly cut cocaine in a mall food court

I spotted the ‘coming soon’ signs months and months ago. I knew it was coming even before then, from a link on extramsg‘s frontpage. It’s called Kinta, and it occupies the corner spot of a new mixed-use condoplex on SE Belmont and 34th, across from the Avalon, my favorite place to smuggle beer and watch the bad movies for which I cannot bear to pay a fraction of full price.

I’d been out riding my bike and enjoying an oddly cool and overcast evening when I decided to pop in, solo. Such crazed and poorly considered decisions are not my standard fare, but as this has so far been a summer of surprises, I let my freak flag fly.

The space is fantastically ugly from the outside. Long passed has the calm and vaguely suburban aesthetic that brought us the Belmont Dairy condoplex, to be replaced–rather predictably, I suppose–with a ‘pearlier than thou’ look best captured by the slogan ‘ugly is the new pretty’. This specific building is vertical lines of beadboard-imitating neutral wood, unframed glass and bare cement.

Kinta itself tries hard to create a different vibe in which to serve their food, starting with black walls, red lacquer chairs, white table cloths and many brightly colored paintings on the walls. The dining space and the art is dramatically lit, the ceiling is cleared up to the very top of the space, and a rather intricate light sculpture of sorts suspended above the room does not cast sufficient light upwards, making the top of the space seem like the restaurant rises into black nothingness, not the floor of a ridiculously expensive loft condo.

When one first saunters in the door, one is greeted by tables to both sides, but your view is dominated by an open kitchen. I sauntered up to the counter and was told to sit wherever I desired. I cast my eyes about, spying the giddy couple by the door and the family of 6 in the middle of the dining area, and I chose a 2 top against the back wall. I was solo, after all–I wanted to watch, and read my book.

The open kitchen destroys the created ambiance of the dining area. The tall ceilings are dropped to suspended panel ceilings, in the unfortunate and ubiquitous white, with fluorescent lighting bouncing off the kitchen surfaces into the dining area. The Counter, which is uncomfortably separated by a giant structural pillar, has a salad bar type refrigerated area, complete with sneeze guards. The walls around the kitchen and down the back corridor to the bathrooms is a shade of coral.

I can’t believe I described something as ‘Coral.’ I’ve never seen coral in my fucking life. Perhaps a more accurate description is ‘painted the same shade as many homes found in Florida.’ wait, I’ve barely been to Florida. Okay, third try: ‘painted a shade that I associate with the word ‘coral’ and the state of Florida only from too many hours playing Grand Theft Auto:Vice City in college.’ Huzzah for honesty.

There are reasons for all of these choices: The panel ceilings hide the miles of pipes and ductwork that would otherwise be an unattractive nuisance, and the salad bar is where the restaurant displays their vegetal variety from which diners choose for their dishes (more on this later). The salad bar/open kitchen issue is exasperated, I think, by some fashion decisions: the crew is in black. I’ve never had the good fortune of working in a fashion-conscious kitchen, but black jackets with matching black baseball caps bearing the Kinta logo made the whole operation look like a slightly upscale Giant Panda in the O’Hare airport.

The menu has a few appetizers and a cocktail, from which I chose the Crispy Hand-battered vegetables (3.95) and the Ginger Halia (7). The veggie patter was a deep-fried mashup of tempura and pakora–the chickpea (gram) flour batter fried up light and crispy and was not greasy at all. I think the batter’d been sitting for a bit, because some veggies were more thickly coated than others. The sweet tropical sauce was indeed sweet, a bit savory and not the cloying sweetness that I had feared. All in all, a good dish. My cocktail was excellent, if a bit sweet. I’m picky with my booze, and this drink played simple syrup, ginger and the sweetest-I-can-stand Makers Mark bourbon together, and I still liked it. Score two for the home team.

I ordered Mee Pelang, which is described on the menu as “Noodles in a potato-based gravy flavored with house-mixed Malaysian curry spices (8.99)”

this is when everything got complicated. I had to pick four vegetables from the list of today’s offerings. I picked Yeo Choy (their spelling) Bell Peppers, Tofu with Green Onions and something else. I was offered the addition of habanero paste for a spicy kick, to which I assented eagerly. Then I had to pick my noodle–although 3 of the four on the menu were different. I chose rice vermecelli. It seems that the only static ingredient in the dish is the ‘gravy’.

This is the part I honestly hate to do. It was some of the worst food I’ve had in a long while. ‘Potato based’ apparently means potato-starch based, and Kinta wins the award for the most improper and gratuitous use of potato starch since an unfortunate encounter with some badly-cut cocaine many years ago, but at least that made my gums numb.

The fistful of rice noodles had been cooked sometime that day, I hope, but not anytime near my arrival; they were a cold lifeless lump in the middle. The Veggies were well cooked, but 3″ spears of green onions are a little hard to take. I’m not sure what kind of tofu they were using, but it was a texture with which I was unfamiliar. I know my ‘fu (fool), so that doesn’t score them any points. The Habenero paste wasn’t in there. This dish was straight-up bland and nearly inedible.

I packed up and booked out.
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warning, spurious and specious reflection about personal food-issues below.
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Lately I’ve been taken to task by a few people about the voracity of my complaints in reviews here. One person noted that it was hard to tell if I ever have a good time at a restaurant or enjoy a meal. I guess it’s a little less than clear that I do all of this for fun–I thoroughly enjoy dining, cooking, and all that jazz. The hilariously cynical and backwards complaining actually have little to do with and fun times I may or may not have. In fact, from hair and teeth to vitriolic vindalho and all my written and re-convened memories of dining, I rarely don’t have a good time.

The question, then, is why I can’t live with the minor deficiencies of every restaurant experience, or at least cover them in a manner that doesn’t put me on the same level with John McLaughlin (before SNL got to him and he lightened up a touch). Well, I think I arrived at my answer while dining at Kinta–I want my own restaurant. Every criticism I produce about other restaurants is a reflection of the negative space surrounding my unfulfilled dream of restaurant ownership. I haven’t gone all pipe-dream about it; I don’t have notebooks of fantasy tasting menus, I don’t know what it’ll be called, I don’t have the light fixtures, location and FOH uniforms decided, but the criticism process helps me sketch out what these choices might be, based on what I experience in other restaurants that I wouldn’t do in mine.

In other words, I bestow my bitchy twang on anything that isn’t ‘what I would do in my joint.’

This leaves me at ultimate odds with every restauranteur from moment one, because what they do–and I assume that, like me, they have created the ultimate restaurant space that their desires, goals, budget and soul can produce–is never going to mimic what I would do if given the chance. I don’t think this fact discounts my reviews; I mention what I didn’t enjoy because as a diner–albeit an over-opinionated, curmudgeonly one–and as a person particularly enamored with the restaurant industry, I’m more than eager to share my opinions, often in strong terms. It’s a potent mix of passion, persnickitiness and powerfully bad word choice.

It is what it is.
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That diatribe relates to Kinta because I understand where the owners may be coming from about many of the choices they’ve made that, to me, result in a rather awkward dining experience. In no particular order:

the open kitchen: open kitchens are difficult things to implement in a nice-restaurant vibe. The way I’ve seen it pulled of successfully is by removing the service layer between the cooks and the diners, with the cooks on display, not the food or raw ingredients or waitresses. Kinta has a layer of FOH and the ‘salad bar’ between the line and the diners, so it looks more like a Baja Fresh if you look at it from the right angle. I would move the FOH and the cash register away, and tuck it out of view somewhere. I don’t know if take-out is a major part of Kinta’s plan, but it doesn’t jive with me to (potentially) drop $40-60 on a meal and then approach a counter to pay for it like it’s, well, $3 fish tacos.

The ‘Salad Bar’: Long ago, I worked a ‘make your own’ omelette bar. After cranking out nearly 100,000 omelettes in a matter of years, I feel safe in making a few conclusions about what happens when diners are confronted with choices–they stick with what they know. A majority of the orders were configurations that have proper names and appear on menus at other places: the ‘denver’ etc. Kinta is simply offering too much choice. I suggest having some ‘standard’ configurations on the menu, with a ‘build your own’ option. When the only constant of a dish is the sauce/gravy/soup base, it doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in the diner for the product. Culinary Choose your own adventure works about as well as, well, Choose Your Own Adventure books.

The ‘salad bar’ model they’re running is also wasteful from an operational standpoint–the customer makes their choices and their server or some other person assembles a plate full of the chosen veggies that then goes underneath the ticket on the pass. Extra dishes and extra labor. you’ve doubled your dish duty automatically.

The judgement: honestly, i think Kinta will pull it off eventually, but they’re having major growing pains. Their model is over-complicated and under-executed. Taking off the training wheels is never fun or easy. I did enjoy my app, and my cocktail. The serviece was really over-attentive, but that’s common when one dines alone. I will give them another try, but I’ll wait a good long while, or go back for some fried veggies and a cocktail.