Tamari fuses Asian, Latin cuisine
For years, Allen Chen resisted becoming a restaurateur. The son of Michael Chen, Allen grew up washing dishes, bussing tables and bartending in his father's restaurants that include China Palace, Sushi Too and My Thai.
"When you're young, you don't want to do what your father does," says Chen, the owner of Tamari Restaurant and Lounge, which opened June 29 in Lawrenceville. "As I matured, I found myself loving the industry. This is what I'm absolutely passionate about."
After high school, Chen spent a decade in places such as Colorado, Washington, D.C., and Mexico. While in Mexico, he fell in love with all aspects of the culture, most especially the food.
"That's when everything fell into place. I found similarities with (Asian and Latin) dishes. The cooking techniques and flavor profiles complemented each other," he explains.
For his restaurant, he chose a building in the emerging Butler Street business corridor in Lawrenceville. "Things were starting to hop in Lawrenceville," he says.
But it took two and a half years of coping with bad luck, building inspectors, erratic contractors and government red tape to transform the space into a functioning restaurant.
"It took a long, long time. But that worked in our favor," he says. "Now Lawrenceville is kind of the buzz neighborhood."
Chen knew he wanted his restaurant to be different from traditional Chinese or Japanese restaurants in Pittsburgh. "It would be the kind of place I would like to go to," he explains.
The restaurant is long, narrow and somewhat noisy. The 10 unadorned black wooden tables fill up early.
Multiple small plates and many choices encourage sharing and swapping and make the restaurant a pleasant destination for small groups who want to socialize or young couples on a date.
Seating also is available on 12 stools at the first-floor bar or six umbrella-shaded tables in the restaurant's concrete forecourt. Overflow can be accommodated upstairs in a lounge with six low tables or at six tables on an outdoor deck that offers a view of Downtown.
Chen's favorite seats, however, are the high stools at a counter toward the back of the restaurant that allow diners a view of the open kitchen and an opportunity for patrons to chat with the chefs and cooks while they work. Customers resisted the concept at first, Chen says. Now, those seats are the ones regulars request, he says.
For a busy restaurant, service was surprisingly swift and accommodating.
Waitstaff handles the steady flow of orders with ease and graciousness. When asked, our waitress offered useful advice, accurately answered our questions about ingredients and cooking procedures, and efficiently kept track of the multiple drink and food requests for our group of four.
Tamari does not take reservations. That means customers who turn up between 7 and 9 p.m. on a Friday or Saturday might find waiting times as long as 45 minutes, Chen says.
To encourage early diners, Tamari offers special price enticements before 7 p.m.
Roger Li originally left Philadelphia to serve as executive chef and part-owner at the short-lived North Shore restaurant New Moon Fusion.
He's now flexing his talents for fusion cuisine as executive chef at Tamari.
It's entirely possible to create a meal from Asian or Latin options. But it's more fun to pick and choose a selection from both cuisines and throw in a few that combine the best of both worlds.
In place of Pittsburgh-size entrees, Chen and Li organized Tamari's menu around small tapas-sized portions that encourage nibbling, mixing and matching of many small plates.
Begin with Robata Grill skewers ($1.50-$2.50 each). The tiny pieces of chicken, beef, shrimp and zucchini arrive on wooden skewers with a trio of dipping sauces -- ponzu butter, ginger and chimichurri. Each was nicely grilled and moist. We particularly enjoyed the Bacon and Quail Egg option ($2), a crisp curl of bacon wrapped around the tiny, firmly cooked egg yolk.
There are five options for Ceviche ($3). We enjoyed the small mound of finely chopped raw tuna "cooked" in lime juice then adorned with bits of red onion, cilantro and serrano pepper. Served atop a small, round, crisp tostone, it was a two-bite delight.
Orders of Avocado Maki and Cucumber Maki ($4 each) yielded an individual tray of tightly wrapped rounds of prettily cut and assembled ingredients.
If you prefer your seafood cooked, go for the Filo Wrapped Tiger Shrimp ($8). Three huge, succulent shrimp are wrapped in a crunchy envelope of phyllo pastry and served with a sauce flavored with mango and cilantro.
We also liked the Peking Duck Quesadilla ($8), a fairly substantial portion of flour tortilla wedges bridging two cultures with their mixture of moist pieces of roast duck, bits of pepino -- a Peruvian fruit -- and a smear of Chinese hoisin sauce accented with serrano peppers.
Entree portions are big on taste but small in size.
We're still wondering how they fit all 16 spices on the tiny but flavorful nugget of 16 Spice Rubbed Pork Tenderloin ($16). It was served with a dollop of pepper ragout and a starchy plantain prosciutto cake that might have been mistaken for a fat potato pancake.
Fish Tacos ($12) -- two soft flour tortillas with nicely flaked pieces of white fish enlivened with pineapple-mango salsa and jalapeno also left us wanting more.
One benefit of small portions is that you've still got room for dessert.
Rather than overwhelm the restaurant's kitchen, Tamari picks up its daily order of desserts from Dozen Bake Shop, its neighbor three doors down Butler Street. The desserts are custom made for Tamari. On our visit, there were two options, each $6.
A Chocolate Ganache Cake , more like a ganache tart with a chocolate crust, contained a surprising and not unpleasant accent of hot pepper. A slim slice of Green Tea Cake treated us to thin layers of light green cake alternating with a sugary icing with a hint of coconut.
Additional Information:
Tamari Restaurant and Lounge
Cuisine: Asian-Latin fusion
Hours: 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays, 11:30 a.m.-midnight Fridays and Saturdays, noon-9 p.m. Sundays
Entree price range: $12-$16
Notes: Outdoor patio area. All major credit cards accepted.
Location: 3519 Butler St., Lawrenceville
Details: 412-325-3435 or Web site
