Posts Tagged “chicken”

I’m a big fan of lunch.  It’s one of my favorite three meals of the day.  Yesterday I went with tangyslice and our CTO to a new to us place, Martsa on Elm for a Tibetan buffet.  We weren’t sure what to expect but we were happy with what we got.

I’m not sure how authentic or representative the buffet selection was, but it was pretty chicken-heavy.  On the first plate, I sampled the steamed bread, tofu with creamy spinach sauce, lemon curry chicken, and sauteed eggplant and vegetables.

The tofu was like a watery palak or saag paneer, but the lemon curry chicken was citrusy without the syrupy sweetness you sometimes get in chinese style lemon chicken.  It had a nice curry flavor too.  The eggplant was tender and a little smoky flavored.

About the steamed bread: it’s not for everybody.  A bit like the dough in a cha siu bao, it’s, well, doughy.  Not much in the way of flavor and you might feel a bit cheated at an all you can eat buffet if you eat a fist-sized blob of bread.  But I love anything that I can use to mop up sauce.

On the second trip to the buffet, I decided to sample each of the other dishes and picked up chili chicken, mixed vegetables and “chicken n cabbage”  I skipped the lentil soup and rice pudding dessert.

The chili chicken was nicely spicy with some kind of cornstarch coating and a selection of crisp bell peppers and onions.  The vegetables were carrot-heavy and not overdone, always a plus especially on a buffet.  The third chicken, with cabbage, was pretty much as advertised: chicken with cabbage.

I’m not sure how often we’ll return, but Martsa is a welcome addition to the run of Davis square lunch options, giving us a little more variety and diversity.  Vegetarians are well-served but not as well as chicken-lovers.

Kudos also for Martsa’s smart decor and quiet vibe.  Love the lampshades.

Last week, that master of marketing mayhem tangyslice and I headed over to one of our lunch haunts, Dragon Garden, to strategerize. The place doesn’t look like much, but it’s reliably decent and pretty cheap. My usual dish is the Ma Po Tofu lunch special with hot & sour soup and a can of soda for just $5.

That will surely get its own feature at some point, but this time we opted for that militaristic classic, General Gau’s Chicken.

Julia has been working in the lab to get the crust just right, but for some reason she’s not available to cater lunch for $5, so we stick with Dragon Garden. It’s pretty ok, and whatever mysterious chemical they use to get the crust crunchy seems to work.

But what continues to blow my mind is that there was a real General Gau. Or Tso. Or maybe even Zuǒ. It’s not likely he (or his wife) invented or discovered any chickens, or any secret wet cornstarch techniques, but it’s nice to know at least some part of the American Chinese food canon has a basis in fact, however tenuous.

And if you can find a copy of that cartoon (Far Side?) in which the general returns for his chicken, I’d be very grateful.