Supermeow!

So! I have like two hours to kill before we go have dinner at Myers + Chang in celebration of our homey Neil‘s birthday. Myers + Chang is quickly becoming like one of my most favoritest restaurants ever. It has a really cool Blade Runner-esque atmosphere, the food is great, and the service is excellent.

The first time we went, we had kind of a mixed experience where the highs were extremely high (a fried yellowtail snapper garnished with kumquats, possibly the best preparation of fish I have ever had) and the lows were pretty low (such as gritty fried rice). I’d written comments on the comment card and got a couple of really nice e-mails from Joanne Chang, one of the owners. I was genuinely suprised to hear back from her; I’ll often leave comments at restaurants and never hear anything again (my dad used to share an office in a building owned by a guy who had a bunch of restaurants; this guy always said that it was crucial for management to know about problems if they were interested in running a good restaurant, so I will try to give constructive feedback on comment cards if the situation calls for it). She promised me a bowl of good fried rice on my return visit, which unfortunately didn’t happen until this past August on my BFF Prairie‘s birthday. Joanne was walking around the restaurant talking with customers and making sure all was well, and she stopped by to make sure the birthday girl was having a good dish of vegetarian tiger’s tears and I was all HEY REMEMBER MEEEE? and she did indeed keep her word and I got to have a bowl of proper very delicious fried rice as it was meant to be. On this trip, I also fell in love with their sticky, magic-meat-candy tea-smoked pork spare ribs, which are seriously the best things that I have had to eat in recent history, and their scallion pancake, which is like amazing savory fried dough. Oh, Myers + Chang, if I’d known about you when we were planning our wedding…

Anyhow, you could say that I’ve become a bit of a Joanne Chang fangirl. A Cambridge outpost of Flour Bakery (her original dining exploit, a bakery in the South End that expanded to the Fort Point area as well as Central Square in Cambridge) opened up down the street from my workplace a couple months ago, and I have also become a serious sticky bun devotee. As someone who’s (kind of half-heartedly at the moment, to be honest) trying to keep her weight in check, this is not unlike going to hang out at the smack den. They do have plenty of healthy, non-buttery, non-sugary goo-covered sticky-bun-options, but it’s hard to resist those delicious buns, and I’ve been indulging in at most one every couple of weeks. See, I can control myself, sort of. I haven’t had anything that I didn’t like from Flour at all. If I didn’t have surprisingly good willpower for an overweight lady (powered by a fear of developing diabetes someday since it runs in both sides of the family), those sticky buns would become a daily habit. Moderation! I could probably be *more* moderate, like bimonthly instead of biweekly, but never you mind.

My favorite things from the enterprising kitchens of Joanne Chang are all pretty much “sometimes” foods, so it makes it that much more awesome when occasion comes around to enjoy them!

While I’ve not yet had a chance to pick up a copy of the Flour cookbook (nice, she’s apparently going to be signing cookbooks at some Costco or another on my birthday!), I do intend to do so. I’m honestly not much of a baker, though. What I’d love is a Myers + Chang cookbook, quite frankly. Imagine my delight when I found that she’d posted a couple recipes online! We’ve got her short rib tacos and we’ve got her dan dan noodles (which I also enjoyed a lot when we were last there in August and hope to enjoy again this evening). This is exciting! I want to try making both recipes really soon. My eye is on the prize, though – I want to come at least kind of close to replicating those damn sticky ribs at home. Those are incredible.

Anyhow, Joanne Chang, you are a person to admire in the world of Boston eateries. The service at both of your establishments (that I’ve been to, cos I haven’t been to the South End or Fort Point Flours) is clearly very dedicated to making sure people get delicious, tasty food and the food itself delivers on promises made, but I do think that one of the key components to why I really enjoyed M+C and Flour is the experience.  Management either does a great job of screening for motivated employees or they train them incredibly well because I’ve never once thought “what a dick” about anyone in either eatery. I definitely notice it more and more when I am going out to eat… the varying degrees of “This job is paying my bills” and “I seem to genuinely enjoy working here” and “I don’t care” vibes emitting from staff. Everyone has bad days at work, but I either don’t pick up on it or am coincidentally not exposed to it when I’ve gone to either place. Happy employees make for a happy and productive workplace making excellent product! I’d read an interview with Ms. Chang at some point somewhere (don’t remember where or when) where she talked about how she felt it was important to treat her employees well, and I was impressed because I could pretty much tell that was the case before I’d read the article.

(featured photo is by nodame; used per terms of Creative Commons license)

Anyhow, if you have the chance, these establishments are well worth your dining dollar.