Chipotle's Asian Concept -- CALLED IT

A long time ago on this blog, back when it was still in its infancy and I was figuring out what shape it might take (I say as if I have since figured out what shape this takes...), I wrote about Chipotle's new "Asian concept" that was reportedly in the works.

Specifically I wrote:

Sidestepping the PC-minefield of conflating the diversity of Asian cuisines into one concept, I can see a Vietnamese "inspired" (for all you purists out there) menu that could easily work within the Chipotle model:

Banh mi sandwiches
Bun (room temp vermicelli salad-type dish)
Spring/summer/garden rolls (I'm thinking of the fresh ones, rather than the deep fried ones)

All of these draw upon easy to source local ingredients, can be adapted to suit a variety of diets and food preferences, and can be quickly assembled to order. Oh yes, and they're delicious.

Well ShopHouse has been open for a few months now, and all I have to say is,

CALLED IT.

The basic components of ShopHouse's menu? "Bowls" of protein, veggies, and sauce over your choice of jasmine or brown rice, or chilled rice noodles, and banh mi sandwiches.

Interestingly, despite being almost a year old, that original post has the most hits of any post here, and people still regularly find my blog from searching for "chipotle asian concept."

Apparently Chipotle is not the only one to draw on the mainstreaming banh mi bandwagon, though, as I discovered when I stumbled upon BONMi, just a 10 minute walk down the street from Shophouse. BONMi's website seems to espouse a lot of the same values as ShopHouse: inspiration in Vietnamese/Southeast Asian cuisine of course, but also "locally sourced environmentally friendly products whenever possible", and even similar tones of orange in their color schemes.

Despite emanating from national companies (Denver-based Chipotle and the New York-based JBH Advisory Group), both ShopHouse and BONMi are currently only located in Washington, DC. In another example of eerie similarities, both proprietors have talked about how DC is actually a great city for trying out new food concepts.

The District is an ideal launching pad for the concept, according to [Lynne] Jacoby [a partner in the JBH Advisory Group that has conceptualized the new 40-seat eatery]. "...D.C. is the best place for restaurants to open, believe it or not," she says. "Unemployment is very low here, it's a very eclectic group of people here, and there's a high concentration of educated people..." (BONMi Opens Today In Downtown D.C.)

"As for why ShopHouse chose to debut in the District of Columbia and not in New York City, [ShopHouse's director of concept development, Tim Wildin] explained that D.C. is a better "proving ground."
"There are just hundreds of restaurants in New York City that aren't great, but last," he said, noting that New York City's high population density might sustain an eatery even when the concept isn't exceptional. On the other hand, Wildin said, a restaurant's performance in D.C., a city with a burgeoning food scene but fewer people, might be a better indication of a concept's potential success elsewhere. (ShopHouse, Chipotle's New Asian Spin-Off, Opens In D.C. )

This is one of the few times that, from a food perspective, I feel lucky to be in Washington, DC.

Chipotle's Asian concept

I have yet to read details about Chipotle's plans to launch a quick-service Asian concept (perhaps because there aren't many), but I find this article interesting for how it characterizes and generalizes about Mexican and Chinese cuisine.

3 Challenges Chipotle Faces Launching an Asian Chain

I'm guessing that certain figures of Mexican cuisine, including Top Chef Master Rick Bayless, Diana Kennedy, and those who advocated for UNESCO to recognize Michoacan cuisine as a form of intangible cultural heritage might object to the idea that "Mexican food is pretty simple to execute. You throw together beans, tortillas, a few meats and cheeses, guacamole, rice, and you’re pretty set."

Oddly, she contrasts this to Asian food which "involves a lot more chef expertise, more ingredients, different spices, and more complex dishes that are tricky to keep appetizing-looking in a warming tray — just hit your local grocery store’s hot-deli line or a shopping-mall food court and take a look." Rick Bayless's preparation of mole negro for a recent state dinner at the White House included more than 20 different ingredients and took several days to prepare. That's just for the sauce.

Tice also thinks that quick-service Asian food based on local, organic ingredients faces a greater challenge compared to doing the same for Mexican food. But my guess is that Chipotle will choose those Asian dishes that serve their model well, rather than trying to represent the range or depth of Asian cuisine. Sidestepping the PC-minefield of conflating the diversity of Asian cuisines into one concept, I can see a Vietnamese "inspired" (for all you purists out there) menu that could easily work within the Chipotle model:

Banh mi sandwiches
Bun (room temp vermicelli salad-type dish)
Spring/summer/garden rolls (I'm thinking of the fresh ones, rather than the deep fried ones)

All of these draw upon easy to source local ingredients, can be adapted to suit a variety of diets and food preferences, and can be quickly assembled to order. Oh yes, and they're delicious.

You could even throw pho into the mix, though I would only recommend it for eat-in customers (and squeamish eaters probably wouldn't want the raw beef on the side). Takeaway pho is never a good idea...

Hong Kong eats (boy, does it ever!)

One of the great things about having a mom that lives in Hong Kong, is that when I find myself with a free month between the end of semester and the beginning of my summer study abroad program, I can actually say, Hey, why not hit up Hong Kong for a few weeks? While the freedom of a graduate student and the finances of a graduate student sadly don't always match up to make such a proposition possible, the generosity of my mom, aided by her United mileage rewards account, came to the rescue, and I got to spend what turned out to be 2 awesome weeks in the city of my childhood.


How to encapsulate the diversity that is the Hong Kong dining scene? I often tell people that what I love about Hong Kong is that you can have a five minute meal or a 3+ hour meal. You can sit on stools in the street, or in a plush armchair with mile-high windows overlooking the harbor. Your cutlery might consist of chopsticks from the communal container and a roll of toilet paper, or heavy silverware and new plates the second your first one gets the slightest bit dirty. You can cozy up to complete strangers at shared tables, or stick to your known entities at your own table. Interestingly, while Hong Kong and Macau only share 3 Michelin-starred restaurants for the area, that's already enough to encompass this diversity.

Some highlights of my own dining experiences:


Won ton mein (shrimp dumplings and egg noodles) and gai lan (Chinese broccoli) at Mak On's Noodles in Central. The awesome food aside, this restaurant is in what I've now decided is one of my favorites areas of Hong Kong. It's just around the corner from the famed Hong Kong style milk tea place, Lan Fong Yuen, and its neighboring streets are some very cool small alleys filled with fresh produce vendors.
5-minute meal (admittedly, my 5 minute meals -- I went back the next day -- actually lasted a bit longer. I'm a slow eater), shared tables, and chopsticks.



Sunday brunch at Spoon. (Special thanks to my mom's coworker, Charles, and his dad, the manager at Spoon, for pushing our reservation status from waiting list to confirmed). Sunday brunch in Hong Kong is a whole other category of dining in my book, which, for the purposes of this blog entry, might be summed up as fulfilling the 3+ hour, plush armchair and amazing harbor views, heavy silverware, and private table dining categories.


I would also add the category of incredibly good value for the luxury experience. The first glass of champagne and subsequent free-flowing red and white wines are included in the price of brunch; the Thai asparagus with black truffles and amazing beef tartare shown above were but two of the numerous offerings in the appetizer buffet. Cheers to mi madre!



Wet market and seafood lunch at Ap Lei Chau. You buy your produce/ingredients in the wet market downstairs, the fishmonger kills, cleans and bags the fish, and then you bring it upstairs to these "restaurants" that are really nothing more than small storefronts, and tell the cooks how you want it all prepared.


Your fish goes from water to plate in about 30 minutes (depending on how long you browse through the market). Not for the faint of heart, nor those who don't like to think about where their food comes from.
Stools (though not sitting in the street); chopsticks and toilet paper.



Dim sum at Tim Ho Wan. This is where the Michelin star reference comes in, although my family's opinion is that the place is okay, but not anything particularly special, and definitely not worth the wait to try more than once. When I was there with my dad at about 11 AM, the lady gave out numbers for tables saying, We'll honor your ticket any time before 4 pm. We ended up waiting about an hour. Personally, I think the prices and quality would make it a reasonable destination if the wait weren't so long.

Shared tables, slash, tiny tables crammed so close together you might as well be sharing a table. Unfortunately, my dad and I drew the short end of the stick and got seated at the outermost of 3 tables in a row. I had to get up to let people out and in about 4 times throughout my meal.

I've got some other dining experiences to report on, but they don't quite fit into the time/environment dichotomy I've set up here. Which probably just goes to show the danger of thinking in dichotomies...

High-fructose corn syrup is okay if it's "ethnic"?

A recent trip to a neighborhood Japanese market got me thinking about how culture affects our perceptions of food. Specifically how, for a certain group of foodies, the idea of "culture" perhaps inspires us to eat or justify eating foods we wouldn't ordinarily consume.

For instance, I generally try to avoid buying and eating processed foods, i.e. most things that come in a box at the supermarket. Since reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, I've also been trying to avoid high fructose corn syrup, more to protest the crazy agricultural policies that allow it to be a cheap "filler" ingredient in lots of food products (do we really need HCFS in our sliced bread?) than the admittedly contested claims to it being less healthy and contributing to obesity rates more than other sugars. Yet, what did I end up buying at the Japanese grocery store? Fried fish cakes (processed fish, sorbitol, MSG, tons of things I can't pronounce), instant yakisoba (MSG), and instant Japanese curry (because, you know, it's so hard to find potatoes and carrots in DC...).



And it's not just Japanese food. I've found myself doing the same thing in foreign supermarkets of every variety. Potato chips rarely earn a second glance from me during my meanderings through Safeway. At Tesco in Britain, though, suddenly Thai curry and ketchup and lemongrass make artificially-flavored crisps more palatable. Instant tapioca tea in Chinese markets, boxed chestnut soup in France, and frozen minced pies in London have all tempted me at one point or another.

It seems I'm trying to eschew American fast/ready-made food culture, only to turn around and buy into its "fill in X culture here" counterparts. Clearly part of the attraction is the novelty factor of either seeing somewhat familiar foods in unexpected forms -- whoa, you can make Thai curry into a potato chip?!? -- or unfamiliar foods in familiar forms, as with instant tapioca tea in the same packaging as instant hot chocolate. By extension, it would seem that these supermarket versions of traditional food cultures might then present an easily accessible introduction into unfamiliar food territory. But how, then to balance cosmopolitan tastes with locavore philosophies? Does interest in foreign foods expressed through the more accessible processed food route undermine attempts to preserve traditional food cultures? Or does it help preserve it by maintaining interest in a more accessible form?