SADLY, XIE XIE IS NOW CLOSED.
A cool thing about living in one of the food capitals of the country is that if there’s a famous chef on Top Chef or a restaurant documented on the Food Network, there’s a good chance we can hop a train and go taste the food. And isn’t that what all those food shows are about? I mean, we can only watch the food for so long before we need to actually taste it, right?
The chef of the Asian sandwich shop Xie Xie in Hell’s Kitchen is Angelo Sosa, who is a front runner and big personality on the current season of Top Chef. On the television show, his inflated ego doesn’t seem to get in the way of his food winning most of the competitions. So it makes us really want to sample the work he’s doing.
But this isn’t the reason we went to Xie Xie. We went because one of their menu items is on the Time Out list. The fact that we got to try Angelo’s Asian-inspired gourmet, but casual sandwiches was just a bonus.
And the sandwiches were really really good. It’s no wonder he’s doing so well on the show. The shredded pork in the pork buns was intensely flavored and come close to Momofuko’s now classic buns. The fish sandwich was also surprisingly tasty. It’s a hero of tilapia, onion jam, sriracha mayo, and probably my favorite herb: dill. The components worked perfectly together making a really balanced and surprisingly light and savory sandwich. I still can’t get the combo of the sweet jam, spicy mayo, and herby dill off my tastebuds. And I’m not sure I want to.
We ended the meal with the reason we were here in the first place: the 1,000 Year Old Ice Cream Sandwich. Huh?
It’s an innovative play on a classic Asian dish (just like all these sandwiches) – the 1,000 Year Old Egg. One more time: huh?
It’s an old Chinese dish where the egg is preserved in clay, salt, lime, ash, and other ingredients for 10 to 100 days (not 1,000 years, I’m afraid). The yolk eventually turns green and the white turns black, making the egg smooth and creamy and giving off an odor of sulphur. Sound delicious, right?
Well, when it’s actually ice cream and caramel that’s been turned black, it sounds a bit more tolerable. I think the ice cream was also a caramel flavor because it was very sweet and slightly metallic. It was all sandwiched between two crispy chocolate cookies, but that black caramel was the best part of all. And trying to figure out how they made it that black color was a delightful culinary mystery (they told me it’s a secret).
It’s an innovative, original spin on both our classic dessert and an ancient Chinese culinary trick. And this is one dessert that won’t get anybody voted off Top Chef.
Would Xie Xie’s 1,000 Year Old Ice Cream Sandwich make my Top 100 of the year? 7 out of 10 because while it’s a bit messy, it is a delicious, creative idea that actually works.
