Uncle Joe's, A Hong Kong Bistro, Denver

The day before hubby was done with his conference, I spotted Uncle Joe's, A Hong Kong Bistro, across the street from our hotel and got totally excited about giving the place a try. 

It was definitely a trendy restaurant serving "new" Chinese cuisine. The food was meh and of course over-priced, because somebody's got to pay for all that poshy decor. I was totally silly with my expectations to begin with.

Here's the menu. Click to zoom.

 

We ordered a several appetizer dishes and was terribly disappointed with the Crispy Sea Salt Tofu. They used firm tofu and over-fried it, so it was actually hard to bite and hurt to eat. The "Crazy Dumpling" was pork wonton drenched in hot oil, which annoyed me. Folks, it's time you stop drowning perfectly food in hot oil and brand it "Sichuan," hmm? And the hot oil wasn't even hot, never mind the tongue-numbing goodness. The Pork Siu Mai were good, but again so over-priced, $7 for 4 pieces. We should have just gone for dimsum for a better meal and a more reasonable check.   

The Cha Shao Pork Sliders looked way better than they tasted. The bun was cold and wasn't fluffy, and the meat was dry.

The Sichuan Style Green Beans were most disappointing. The green beans were so under-cooked we were practically eating raw green beans. And it was doused not in hot oil but in soy sauce. Huh? The only highlights of our meals were the Sweet Potato Tots sprinkled with ume salt and the Pan Seared Scallops. The tart and only slightly salty ume salt was an interesting contrast with the sweet potatoes. The scallops were cooked just right, neither over nor underdone, and XO sauce made them rather flavorful. But yeah, aside from these 2 items everything else was a let down.