It’s Bar vs Kitchen at Jade Monkey
Cleveland Circle restaurant hosts competition Tuesday nights
Foodies and cocktail enthusiasts, get ready to have your competitive spirit stoked tonight at Cleveland Circle’s Jade Monkey. The Asian fusion bar and restaurant, opened since February, recently launched a Tuesday night competition featuring a specialty cocktail and a dim sum offering, using the same ingredient. The fun part? You get to vote on who used the ingredient to best effect: the bar or the kitchen.
The restaurant has a funky and eclectic vibe and a menu of innovative, Asian-inspired appetizers, entrées, and drinks. To entice new customers and encourage the kitchen and bar staff to experiment with different ingredients, the restaurant decided to launch a friendly battle between the front and back of the house on Tuesday nights. The week’s full-sized cocktail and appetizer can be had for $15. When customers are finished eating, they can vote for the kitchen or the bar.
Jade Monkey general manager Katie Kurty and her team choose the ingredient to be used each week. The caveat is that it has to be something used in Asian cuisine. Kurty challenges the chefs and bartenders to come up with drinks and dishes different from anything patrons have tasted before. From basil to ginger, Chinese 5 spice to ponzu sauce, and sambal to Szechuan peppercorn, the teams have had to work outside the boundaries of traditional Asian cuisine. And as the competition advances, the ingredients have become increasingly obscure.
“We started off easy with ginger and basil, but have been making it harder,” Kurty says. “We don’t want anything to be easy or expected.”
The unusual nature of some ingredients—try to create a cocktail with ponzu sauce—has spawned culinary creativity. One week, the kitchen concocted a halibut ceviche with habanero and the bar a watermelon and habanero margarita (now a customer favorite). Another week, citrus and fried wontons with pickled and fresh bean salad and Szechuan peppercorn vinaigrette, topped with white asparagus and bacon, was accompanied by a Szechuan peppercorn infused negroni.
The weekly competition and the unconventional dishes and drinks it has sparked, have been a hit with patrons: many are now Tuesday night regulars. “Lots of people return,” Kurty says. “It’s a good way to get people interested in foodie culture involved and to play with their taste buds.”
Tonight’s ingredient is lemongrass. Without revealing any specifics about the dish and drink, she did say diners can expect a lot of creativity, especially from the bar.
If you love trying new and unusual foods, thrive on food competitions, or just want to try an inventive cocktail after a day at work, Jade Monkey Tuesdays are for you.
Jade Monkey, 1952 Beacon St., Brighton, is open Monday through Thursday, 4 to 11 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 4 to 11:30 p.m., Sunday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 4 to 10 p.m.; phone: 617-303-1000 (reservations recommended on weekends).
Liz Vanderau can be reached at vanderau@bu.edu.
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