Dinner Out @ Suzie Wong's on Madison

The top "talk of the town" on Urbanspoon Cincinnati is Suzie Wong's on Madison, and that was enough to get us out tonight to try more of the menu.  We'd gone the first week it was open, before it even had the "Grand Opening" sign, but that was take out and we weren't really paying close attention.

The Food: We started with 2 appetizers - crab rangoon and calamari. There's a calamari on the "Starters" menu and another on the "Garden Salads" and we're pretty sure they brought us the salad, but its hard to tell which was which (forgot to look at the receipt). The rangoon were par for the course - not much to say.  They came with a tangy sauce that was somewhere between sweet and sour and duck, as well as some hot mustard.  I'd never put mustard on a rangoon - not too shabby.  I generally find that calamari can either be great or just blah.  This was definitely elevated above blah by the basil, green chili pepper, pomegranate, onion, and scallion mixture and sweet and (not so) spicy dressing - but it wasn't great either.

For entrees, we split the Bangkok Coconut Curry and the Bi Bim Bap.  The Bap (I'll call it that for short) was the clear highlight - it's a Korean dish made in a clay pot.  This was a great dish - and a big one too!  Rice gets crispy and yummy on the bottom as its cooked, while a perfect fried egg that oozed as its poked, kimchi with a nice kick, and sprouts hold down the top. Tender beef was quite tasty, and there's a sweet and spicy sauce on the side for added flavor and to bring balance to the whole dish.  As for the curry, it's put right into a real coconut, so you can scrape off the sides if you want. It's got a good full flavor, but I would have liked it to be a bit thicker.  The chicken was in the coconut, while the broccoli (a bit overcooked - no snap), peppers, and onions were in a small bowl on the side.  It also comes with white or brown rice.  If you're going out just for curry, I think there are better options in the city, but its still worth ordering and wasn't bad by any measure.

The Ingredients:A special shout out to anyone who offers brown rice!  There are only a few places in town that do.  Other than that, nothing notable here - no local or seasonal ingredients mentioned.

The Story & Setting: It's a bit odd eating on what is basically a pass through intersection that has no other life in the evening. I have to imagine this was the main reason that Seny, which was in the space previously, didn't make it.  A weekend when Manifest art gallery is open would be a good time to try out Suzie's.  On a Monday at 7:30 the place was about half full.

The service was very friendly, and except for the fact that we asked for tofu and got chicken in the curry (which we didn't care enough about to ask for a change), everything was nice and easy.

Overall - solid experience, we'll definitely be heading back. See the slideshow below for more pics.