Typhoon

A whirlwind tour of Asian cuisine

Dining Out by Robert Nadeau

DINING OUT

Typhoon (617) 859-8181 725 Boylston Street (Back Bay), Boston Open daily, 11:30 a.m. - 11:30 p.m. AE, DC, MC, Visa Full bar Valet parking available Saturday nights sidewalk-level access

"Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, sushi." "A fusion of Asian foods." This kind of restaurant is everywhere these days, from suburban centers to the malls to downtown shopping districts. They are convenient, not overly expensive, and apparently so open to all tastes that one is readily swept inside. But once seated, we encounter a new variation of the old problem: what in the vast menu is authentically good, if anything? This problem used to be blamed on the stereotypical "inscrutability" of Asian waiters. The Anglo customer could not successfully inquire into what would be good. If the server made recommendations, it was assumed that he was probably dissembling, and if he didn't, that he was inscrutable. In either case, the Anglo customer couldn't "read" the restaurant, and the arrival of Asian customers and bilingual menus brought added reminders that someone else perhaps could.

Now we have the non-fusion of cuisines historically separated by thousands of miles, great seas, and mountains. What nationality are the cooks? Will the dishes of that country be authentic, or will they be tourist dishes? Again, I am scrutinizing the waiters, as if they could tell me. (My wife chatted up some waiters in one of these restaurants once, until it emerged that they, too, were clueless about whether the food was Vietnamese, Cambodian, Thai, or just what -- the waiters were from Nepal.)

So what about Typhoon? Well, based on the menu, my guess is that Vietnamese food is the basis here, but the sushi is entirely convincing, and some Chinese dishes are quite good, though others are not. There are restaurateurs in Boston whose families were Chinese ethnics in Vietnam, and such folks can always hire a good sushi chef. But with Typhoon, it's hard to be certain which cuisine grounds the menu, since even the Vietnamese food is somewhat compromised.

For example, the "Combination Beef Noodle Soup (Pho)" ($4.95 small, $5.25 large) gets pretty elaborate treatment, with five kinds of beef worked into a large bowl (I ordered the small) of noodle soup, and a full assortment of condiments: bean sprouts and Asian basil, hoisin and red-hot chili paste, and a slice of lemon. However, the tripe and tendon were present in barely token quantities, and though the broth was beefy enough, it was not fully spiced with health-promoting star anise. I'd have to guess that whoever cooks this pho goes down to Dorchester for a bowl at shift's end.

Some of the well-executed Vietnamese dishes here are shrimp paste on sugar cane ($8.95), an appetizer of sweet-flavored shrimp baked onto a core of chewable sugar-cane pith; fresh spring roll ($3.95) -- the soft kind, the translucent wrapper enclosing greens and noodles with a mediocre Thai-style peanut sauce; and steamed vermicelli with grilled shrimp ($9.95), a platter where you assemble lettuce wraps with mint, shrimp, and noodles, then dip them in a good fish sauce.

On the Chinese tip, things are very mixed, much as they were in Chinatown about 20 years ago. If you order something like chicken fingers ($5.95), the breading is huge and you have to eat them quickly, while they are hot and crisp, because they turn dull and greasy as they cool. Sweet-and-sour chicken turns out to be the same fingers served in a very sweet sauce with pineapple and red and green bell peppers.

On the other hand, a "Classic Cantonese Steamed Sea Bass" ($24.95) is just that: excellent buttery fish with fine shreds of ginger and scallion and a simple soy-based sauce. I've had bigger sea bass at that price, but not much better -- even when the seafood has been netted from a live tank. Duck with garlic sauce ($12.95) is actually a fusion dish, although what it is fused with is Cantonese salt-and-pepper shrimp, which is also on the menu. The duck is fried in a gray batter with some black pepper, then dressed up in a garlicky brown sauce.

Peking duck ($16.95) really isn't bad if you aren't comparing it to the mandarin original. The pancakes are thin and fresh-tasting, the duck meat is delicious, and the skin is fairly crispy, though it is not up to what the classical treatment achieves with all its drying and inflating. Pancakes are made with hoisin sauce, but then I noticed the lack of scallion brushes, which are a key part of authentic Peking duck. That said, it's good eating. And so is "Sea Treasures Basket" ($16.95) -- shrimp, squid, and scallops in a really nice basket of edible fried taro. This comes with a gorgeous radish rose -- maybe there is a Thai chef, too -- but also with that Cantonese white sauce that I think must have been designed for powerfully flavored dried seafoods.

A sushi deluxe was competent but not brilliant, and Typhoon is located halfway between Gyuhama and the Chinatown Ginza, which are brilliant.

Now the Thai stuff. Spicy shrimp soup ($3.25) is a good effort at tom yum, with lots of lemongrass and some galangal. Ruby scallops ($14.95) are quite good, although as much for the sea scallops themselves as for the spicy caramelized sauce. Desserts are few, and perhaps best ignored.

Typhoon has a wine list, but drink beer or the ice water with lemons. Our only call to the bar was for a Shirley Temple, which was curiously adult -- club soda and grenadine with a twist, but no Sprite! The dining room is somewhat crowded, though there is a Japanese-style tatami room screened off for reserved parties. The brush paintings and paper screen suggest that a Japanese restaurant used to occupy the space. That would have been a fitting lineage.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com.

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