It ’ s the first restaurant from Bill Jones and Richard Horner, two friends who met while cooking at Donald Link ’ s Cajun restaurant Cochon. Jones grew up on the union land, Horner is from Maryland. Both fixated on a shared love of chinese food, specifically American-Chinese food, the standards that have made taiwanese restaurants a platitude of american dining from coast to seashore. “ We ’ ra not drawing from fusion, we ’ re not drawing from regional taiwanese cuisines ; we ’ ra drawing from the ease food of our partake american english young person, ” said Horner. An early taste of their menu revealed tender wontons filled with shrimp and dab with blue chili crunch ; wide, slippery zhou fun noodles with soy-soaked beef ; dry fried eggplant, glazed with vegetable oil and tossed in the wok with hot peppers ; and fried rice aromatic with onions and green onion. “ It ’ s comfort food, the stuff we grew up on, ” said Jones. Most entrees are in the $ 11 to $ 16 scope. Appetizers are $ 3 to $ 7. The lunch menu will have jazz band plates. While the source substantial is old school, Blue Giant follows the styles of the modern, chef-led restaurant. There ‘s a casual but intentional design, a built-in buzz from pre-opening pop-ups with friends in the business, and an open kitchen lined with a dining measure to make the most of a minor quad, and give visitors a opinion of the military action. Where Jones wants to make his distinguish in the menu is with high-grade ingredients, house-made staples ( down to the hoisin sauce ) and an approach directed by his fine-dining know. “ What we ’ re doing is no unlike than if we were cooking at a french restaurant or any other kind of cuisine, ” Jones said. “ We ’ re taste as we go, assessing relish, balance, texture, olfactory property. In the end, it just has to taste good. ” To develop the concept, he and Horner hit the cookbooks and logged plenty of time around Chinese restaurant tables, calibrating their own recipes and techniques along the means .
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look for char siu pork barrel, mapo bean curd, scallop testis foo young and salt-and-pepper wolffish ( catfish is the mascot for Blue Giant, named for the very large gloomy catfish common to both China and the American South ). The vertex of the menu is Peking duck, served whole with leek pancakes. The restaurant has a specialized oven for the cup of tea, a fridge-sized fishing gear visible from the boom board, with hooks and rails designed to cook birds evenly at high heat. Through a windowpane in its door, you can see the ducks increasingly bronzing into benighted, deeper hues. The initial menu is a service line of greatest hits, the partners said, and it ’ s besides a start sharpen. They plan to expand the roll as the restaurant gets rolling. Look for dishes with clapper, pork barrel tails and boring braises as the menu expands, and more seasonal worker ingredients as time goes on. The restaurant is a snug space, with seats for about 50 between the dining measure, a bank of booths and a pair of round tables. The localization was previously the Abstract Book Shop & Cafe, a corner spot that was besides once the hub of the city ’ s early punk music picture ( green Day is said to have played here ). The two partners contribution a birthday – Sept. 3, 1986. They note this is besides the birthday of Shaun White, the snowboarding Olympic gold decoration winner, and that White is on the commemorate for his love of chinese food. They have a mission to get him to visit. If he does, I recommend the prawn wontons, the gripe chow fun and the egg hustle. Blue Giant Chinese 1300 Magazine St., 504-582-9060 opening hours : dinner Wed.-Mon. Full hours ( beginning Jan. 15 ), Wed.-Mon. 11 a.m.-10 post meridiem ( closed Tue. )
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