The Bamboo House Asian Restaurant is one place where food presentation outshines dining room décor.

The sushi chefs and cooks show off their artistic flare in the way they plate your food. The Bamboo House Asian Restaurant just had its grand opening a little over two weeks ago, and is located on West Genesee Street in downtown Syracuse.

Although no one was dining while I was, it made my meal come quicker and I was happy with that. The walls were painted in a light orange color. The empty walls made the already-vacant restaurant look even more desolate.

The restaurant offers Chinese, Japanese and Thai food. The majority of the menu is made up of Chinese and Japanese food, and there isn’t more than five Thai dishes. It appears the Bamboo House Asian Restaurant specializes more in Americanized Chinese and Japanese cuisine than Thai cuisines, or are still working on adding more Thai dishes to their menu.

I tasted the crab Rangoon for $4.25, the volcano roll for $11.95, and the Chinese lunch of hot and sour soup, pork fried rice, and hunan chicken for $6.50.

I started off with crab Rangoon, a fried appetizer that’s typically wonton sheets wrapped around a mixture of crabmeat and cream cheese. The edges of the wrappers are sealed together using egg whites, which is crucial, since otherwise the filling would ooze out while deep-frying it.

That was the case with these wrappers. The appetizer dish came with six mini wontons, and not every crab Rangoon had the filling in it, which was disappointing.

Those ones instead ended up being crispy homemade wonton chips, though I did enjoy the ones that had the creamy filling intact. They were fried to a perfect crispy and crunchy texture, which was a total opposite to the warm and creamy filling, which made this a snack worth craving.

Soon after, the waiter brought out the sushi. The volcano roll exploded with flavors. The whole roll was dipped in batter and fried until the outside was crispy, and had seaweed casing and was stuffed with cooked white fish. Then it was cut, and topped with pureed raw salmon, sauces and a crunchy garnish.

It was mouth-watering, sweet and savory, like delicious candied protein. The multiple textures were like a carnival in my mouth: the starchy rice, the mushy pureed raw fish, the meaty cooked white fish, the creamy spicy mayo, the sweet silky drizzle of eel sauce and the crispy tempura flakes that took my taste buds on a fun ride.

On the center of the plate, a cucumber garnish was carved into what appeared to be half of a dahlia flower and a carrot was transformed into a bed of slinky noodles. Both were set right in the center of the plate.

I also ordered the hunan chicken, which is a popular Americanized Chinese dish. It came with hot and sour soup and pork fried rice. The dish also had enough spicy heat to make my tongue feel a bit numb, which I appreciated very much.

I love hot and sour soup, but their soup wasn’t what a typically hot and sour soup would have. It had too much tofu, very minimal enoki mushrooms, and absolutely no bamboo shoots at all. They should’ve called it tofu soup instead of hot and sour soup.

If you’re in Clinton Square and crave Americanized Chinese food, then the Bamboo House Asian Restaurant is a good bet.

Published on March 16, 2014 at 11:08 pm

Contact Vekonda: vluangap@syr.edu