Not With a Bang, But With a Whimper

Bang

If you're hungry, grumpy, or out to an obligatory dinner with acquaintances or clients you'd rather avoid, skip Bang. If you have a few hours and dollars to burn, and the company is good, then it just might be the place to go and be trendy hipsters.

Our evening started with a filler at Marco and Luca's - a dumpling shop serving roughly six different items (of which dumplings are 3) in the Downtown mall. Based on what we had heard of Bang, we decided to grab a few dumplings as an appetizer. Delicious and fast, Marco and Luca's "dumpling" order comes with about 6-8 dumplings in a tiny styrofoam container for $3. Grab this and the hot and sour soup and you can call it a night. The pork and veggie buns look fantastic, and taste great, but be warned: you get one napkin and one set of chopsticks, and these large buns would be hard to eat with an army of heavy utensils. If you're looking to eat gracefully, move on.
Marco and Luca's is in the center of the downtown mall, and shares patio space with their neighbors Cafe Cubano. On a nice September Friday night, with the town out in full swing, it's a wonderful place to grab some dumplings and people watch. Although it's a bit far from campus, the quick availability of cheap snacks makes this place a worthwhile study spot for those who need a crowd.

Across the street, behind the free parking, is Bang. Bang bills itself as Asian tapas (so...dim sum?) that's not dim sum (damn). Following in the passee tradition of Asian fusion, Bang's list of small plates is already only half a page, and reduced further by black sharpee lines across some of the more appetizing-sounding offerings. Given our dumpling first course, we skipped the dumplings and ordered (for four of us). The first to come out was the Korean beef in lettuce cups.
The 'cup' is a leaf of bib lettuce sitting underneath a thin strip of beef, with a tiny dipping sauce on the side. After one bite, the need for sauce became apparent. It didn't help the dryness, but certainly added much needed flavor. At this point, two of four ordered drinks still had not arrived, one of which was mine, and the beef was beginning to dehydrate me.
About twenty minutes later, the drinks arrived with the 'sides' we had ordered - coconut rice and edamame. While the small plates are meant for sharing, the sides are clearly a per-person deal. Fortunately, only one of the two was in demand. The coconut rice was milky and sweet, with just a hint of crunch (and this is coming from someone who hates coconut). There was nothing in particular that the rice went with, as none of other small plates had arrived yet, but it stood on its own. The same could not be said for overcooked edamame sprinkled with prepackaged bread crumbs. I'll let you imagine this one on your own.
About ten hours later, the second entree came out. There was more to go around (in the style of the Donner party, we had consumed one of our guests out of waiting hunger) of the Shrimp with noodles and chiles. One in our group was allergic to peanuts, so we opted out of that, and to Bang's credit the request was satisfied without muss or fuss. Unlike the rest of the meal. To be frank, I was so hungry that I don't even remember what this tasted like, except to say that there must have been a carrot truck that had broken down outside and started handing out produce for free.
Finally, a long awaited thai beef with soba noodles arrived in a heap of buckwheat. One bite and I was done - the food was drenched in cilantro, to a point where nothing else reached the senses.
In the end, our sesame tuna never reached the table - the waitress forgot, and we weren't interested in staying to celebrate Stefanee's December birthday. We told her not to worry about it, and after returning the check which still listed the dish, paid and left.
The food was certainly edible, but the service made the restaurant near intolerable. Fortunately, the conversation was good and so the time passed quickly. But for three small appetizers, the two hour dinner could have been cut down significantly. Bang forgot that the point of tapas is to sample different flavors at the same time. Instead, the menu was so slow that we found ourselves eating the garnish on the plates and drinking the dipping sauce for sustenance.

Rather than attempt to order a dessert, the group of us moved to the Flat, a crepe take-away window located a block away. The crepe suzette doesn't skip on the grand marnier, and anything with chocolate and nutella is filled to the brim. Seating is limited, but the crepes are the real thing and worth the drive downtown alone. Certainly the best dessert Bang has never served.

-M.

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