Silver Spoon
The word fusion makes me want to eat Hamburger Helper for a week, but many of the combinations the Gumtrontips and Yu have come up with, some obvious and some unlikely, are inspired. Yu’s red snapper sashimi with crispy onions is a blazing religious vision with spears of fresh fish pinwheeling out from a nucleus of fried shredded onions and daikon, garnished with salmon roe and drizzled with hot sauce. Against all my expectations, the combination of raw, cold, and crispy-hot really works. Vanna, whose family runs a restaurant in Bangkok, dreamed up the moo ping (grilled pork) maki, which is served with a searing papaya salad. The shrimp tempura maki, topped with an aerated green curry sauce, sounds like it’s trying too hard, but it’s a perfect chemistry of crispy, soft, sweet, and spicy. Nam pla goong chae, butterflied raw shrimp marinated in fish sauce, is a very strong and delicious dish, and not terribly easy to come by around town. Silver Spoon intensifies it by adding a sliver of raw garlic and bits of pickled yellow daikon. All of these things are served with the standard soy sauce, pickled ginger, and wasabi paste, but I wouldn’t bother with them–they’d throw off the balance of brilliant flavors and textures.
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