Pete Tittl: Rice Bowl consistent but bland
| Wednesday, Sep 23 2009 05:07 PM
Last Updated Wednesday, Sep 23 2009 05:09 PM
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Rice Bowl
1119 18th St.
323-2901
Hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday-Thursday and 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
Prices: Appetizers $5.75-$14.99, soup $3.49-$7.25, chow yoke $7.75-$9.25, kung pao entrees $8.75-$9, family style dinners $9.25-$11.50, Cantonese gourmet $13.50-$20.50, "special suggestions" $6.25-$18. Child's plate $6.
Payment: MasterCard, VISA and local personal checks accepted. Does not accept American Express and Discover.
Dress: Casual.
Amenities: Wheelchair accessible; full bar service; some vegetarian options.
Food: HH
Atmosphere: HH1/2
Service: HHH
Value: HH
Next Week: Pizza Bob's at East Hills Mall
Coming Sunday
Marie Hudson, who made Buck's Steakhouse the jewel of westside dining, died recently. Read Pete Tittl's remembrance of her colorful and vibrant life in Eye Street.
RICE BOWL
I've written in the past that some folks consider me the traffic cop of Bakersfield restaurants, and they sometimes write to wonder why I'm not out giving tickets to those committing grievous culinary crimes. Recently I got an e-mail from Beverley Park wondering when I last ate at the Rice Bowl and urging me to go there and write an "honest" account, as her visit was a disaster.
Park said the soup was like water, the chicken she ordered was too sweet to eat (after being told by the waitress that it was cooked with pepper spice), the hot tea was room temperature, the eggrolls were swimming in grease and the shrimp was lost in the gooey batter.
Yikes, that's not something that wanted to make me go, but I thought it would be an interesting experiment to order pretty much exactly what she did and compare notes.
I haven't been to the Rice Bowl often, because it's been open for 60 years and while it was a pioneer in the Cantonese style of cooking that in the 1950s was sweeping America, Chinese cuisine is so much more interesting than that. Admittedly they have added three kung pao dishes to try to keep up with changing tastes, but in my experience it's a place that thrives off dedicated regulars, not progressive foodies. Yet after reading her account, I wondered if the Talking Heads had it right: "Same as it Ever Was." The regulars don't want modern, they want what they've been enjoying for 60 years.
Challenged by Beverley, we visited and ordered the General Tao chicken ($9.49), the soup, the barbecued ribs ($8.99), chow mein, potstickers ($6.25), "chicken sticks" with pineapple ($7.75) and the best dish on the menu in my opinion, the "steak que" ($11.55).
I wish I could complain about her inaccurate account, but a lot of what we had fit her story. General Tao's chicken is an interesting case. As I understand it, it's an American invention, usually made from chunks of chicken coated in a cornstarch-egg-soy sauce batter and covered with a garlic-ginger sauce. The Rice Bowl version is red (almost everything was red), was sweet and had no discernible notes of ginger or garlic.
In fact most everything was sweet, which is how I guess the place keeps its regulars. McDonald's discovered long ago that if you combine fat and sugar you can create a craving in a human for any food product. Everything was sweet except for maybe the steak que, which featured cubed sirloin steak cooked with onions, green peppers and whole button mushrooms. The "chicken sticks" were wings, covered with a sweet, red gloopy sauce that my 2-year-old nephew just loved. 'Nuff said. The ribs were so dry, so hard they were difficult to eat.
Oh, and the tea they brought us was hot, but the egg flower soup was exceptionally thin tasting. My companion was surprised at how light the crowd was on a Saturday night.
It used to be as crowded as, say, Chili's is on a Saturday night. We had no trouble walking in and getting a seat.
Though the restaurant is old, the staff does deserve some credit for keeping it spiffy.
The décor is dated but it's not worn and tired. And the service is personable and friendly in an old coffee-shop way.
