OTD - Out the Door (Vietnamese Fusion Cuisine), San Francisco

Hanging around Japantown so much, hubby and I eventually ventured into the surrounding restaurants. This one is a poshy Vietnamese fusion place called OTD - Out the Door. And out the door indeed, both the line and myself. Really, the place was so "hip" I immediately started dreading whether all the good reviews online were mostly hype. Well, let's just say there are times I hate being right.

We started off with this spare rib bbq with hoisin glaze. It was good, but the hoisin glaze was way too strong and salty. I made this mistake a few times before learning to respect hoisin sauce - it's really quite flavorful and will easily overpower any dish, be it meat, fish, or vegetables. If all you can taste in the dish is the hoisin sauce, yeah, I would say you've used too much of it. The potstickers didn't fare any better. The dipping sauce was good, but the potstickers themselves were meh. As soon as I took a bite, I thought, damn, why didn't we just go have dimsum for dinner?

I was totally excited about this Hongkong style milk tea, but it was bitter because the tea was probably steeped for too long :( 

Hubby was quite taken with this ginger chicken caramelized with onions in a clay pot, but I wasn't impressed at all. Opposite with the other over-flavored dishes we've had more often than not, the chicken in this dish was not well flavored enough. What's up with that? Hmph.

This crabmeat vermicelli smelled and looked so good, but it turned out to be dry and crummy T.T I know, cooking rice vermicelli is difficult, but hey, that's why they're the restaurant and I'm the diner - because I don't want to bother to make it :P It was well seasoned, I'll give them that, but they need to moisten it up a bit and use a different brand vermicelli that's not too crummy after cooked. 

The restaurant has an open kitchen, so the fun is that you can watch your dinner being made right then and there. But hubby and I agreed that we wouldn't pay a giant tab, not a second time at least, just to watch our food being made. We are cheap and picky diners. Ha.