From The New Orleans Menu Daily By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published February 19, 2008 Cafe East 3$ Metairie: 4628 Rye Reservations 888-0078 Lunch Sun.-Fri. Dinner seven days. Open continuously. AE, DC, DS, MC, V. Chinese. Pan-Asian. A striking, almost futuristic, two-story cube of a building, Cafe East is the most avant-garde Chinese restaurant in the New Orleans area these days. And probably the best, too. Following a trend long current in cities with more Asians than we have here, the food at Café East is primarily one ethnicity (Chinese, in this case), but also ventures into dishes from other Asian cuisines as well. For example, they serve a complimentary appetizer of very spicy Korean kimchee. Right there, it puts the fried-rice-and-egg-roll crowd on notice that this isn't another lowball Chinese café. The menu is sprinkled with Thai and Vietnamese dishes, as well as a few dishes that seem to be American with an Asian sauce, along the lines of what some of the gourmet fusion places have been serving us for years. And even the Chinese food is highly adventuresome. Particularly when you order from the list of the house specialties, you'll encounter foodstuffs and flavors you never did before. Pepper levels in dishes denoted as spicy are not diluted even slightly. But it will be years yet before all people in New Orleans and especially in Metairie will grok that kind of food. So the menu starts with the familiar Chinese classics (kung-pao chicken, shrimp with lobster sauce, sweet and sour pork etc.), at familiar prices (around $10). These are prepared well enough, but if you limit yourself to them you may as well have stayed at Cathay or Ming Palace. Instead, start with the scallops (big ones, seasoned nicely, served beautifully), the Szechuan dumplings, the escargots with peppers and garlic(!), or the chicken pot stickers. They have great soups here, making the hot-and-sour just one of several fine choices. The more adventuresome you get within the entrees, the more rewards will come. The most impressive dish I've had here was the Szechuan beef. You may have had a dish with that name, but you have not had this dish. Made with true xanthoxylum piperatum peppercorns, it may be the hottest dish I have ever eaten, taking me to (and maybe past) the threshold of pain. But I couldn't stop--it was that good. The seriously spicy food is not a theme. The fish dishes are excellent, particularly the whole fish and the fish with green curry Thai style. A veal chop with orange musaman curry (a little spicy, a little sweet) was not cut up as is typical in Chinese kitchens, but brought out whole on its bone, with the sauce underneath. Western presentation, Eastern flavor. Also here is a fine and original presentation of Peking duck, a dish so troublesome that most Chinese kitchens avoid it. Here, the duck is presented whole, then taken back to the kitchen to be cut up into two piles: meat in this one, skin in that one. It all returns with some tortilla-like "pancakes," which you stuff with duck and hoisin sauce and roll up like a burrito. And another plate arrives with all that. It's a stir-fried, juicy dish employing all the miscellaneous parts of the duck we never saw again in other Chinese restaurants. This is delicious, too. The total ensemble makes for the grandest kind of Chinese dining. Prices for the chef's specialties are about double those of the standard fare, reaching into the $20s. But these are in line with prices for similar food in other kinds of restaurants, and prepared with equally impressive skill. One final gustatory surprise: they make beautiful desserts here. These are strictly Western--there's no real tradition of dessert in the Far East--and very pretty. A chocolate truffle cake with sesame-vanilla ice cream is architectural, a modern sculpture with an Asian aspect. The wine list and the bar are richly stocked, and not just by the standards of a Chinese restaurant. Café East works at the level of the gourmet bistros in every way. Except one. Service is inconsistent. Some of the servers are thoroughly competent; others less so. That seems to be especially true at lunch. Still, Café East is one of the city's most exciting and original restaurants of any kind, and sets a new standard for Chinese cooking in our area. This was a restaurant in the Top Sixty Ethnic Restaurant Countdown. To view the entire list, click here. Click here for an index of all restaurant reviews. © 2008 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com.