Fast fusion

>> Pan-Asian all-you-can-eat restaurant
Lu Mama is fun but inconsistent

by MARK SLUTSKY

Every month, it seems, the once-desolate stretch of Ste-Catherine (and environs) between the old Forum and Concordia gets a little more interesting, at least for those who love to eat. It’s a process that started a few years ago when noodle shops started popping up on the street, and more and more Chinese and Korean restos soon followed. I’m thinking of Maison Bulgogi, Manchuria Dumpling King, Pret à Manger (now back in business, having inauspiciously burned down five days after I reviewed it last year).

Restaurants, groceries and other small businesses have popped up to fill the commercial void. Some have started to call the area “Chinatown II,” a term I first saw on Cedric Sam’s excellent Montreal blog Comme les chinois (www.commeleschinois.ca). That’s also where I first saw mention of Lu Mama, a new restaurant with a supposed Asian fusion concept.

Lu Mama is located in the spot previously occupied by Arirang, a decent but unmemorable Korean resto that always seemed a little dim and underpopulated. They’ve done a good job of fixing up the old space. It’s now cozy and inviting, with large rectangular paper lamps serving as dividers between the tables. It’s comfortable and private but not stifling.

The fusion idea here is relatively simple, if a little misleading. Simply, it means that the menu is pan-Asian in scope, featuring dishes from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan. The best way to check out a variety of them, at least according to the servers who really pushed this on us, is the all-you-can-eat menu ($19.99).

Now, I’m always wary of a few things. All-you-can-eat menus and restaurants that serve Chinese food and sushi are definitely both on that list. Can Lu Mama beat the odds? Well… yes and no. While we enjoyed Lu Mama’s ambiance and some of its dishes, others weren’t as strong, especially as freshness seemed to vary widely.

You order the all-you-can on a paper menu like you’ll find at a sushi restaurant. While they’re generous with the food, don’t try and sneak any bites to dining companions that haven’t ordered the special: they’re quite strict about that, even going so far as to take away my friend’s chopsticks when he went in for a bite! (They also didn’t want us trying any of his teppan, which didn’t make much sense to me: his meal was finite, ours was infinite—wouldn’t they want us filling up on his dish?)

No surprises as far as the sushi went. We enjoyed the unagi hand rolls, as well as the crunchy kamikaze, made with actual rice krispies and not tempura bits. When the fish was presented sashimi style, its freshness, or lack thereof, was a little more obvious. This was on a Tuesday night; you might get better results on the weekend.

We dived in on the appetizers. The seaweed salad was nice enough that we went back for it twice. The shrimp tempura was lightly breaded shrimp with a sweet sauce; it was tasty. The shrimp balls and squid balls were a little too flavourful, and seemed like they had been cooked from frozen. Also in the fried category were chicken nuggets, which were crisp and pop-able. The Taiwanese garlic sausage, sliced and fried, was nice enough, if a little oily. I liked the flat chive and pork dumplings, definitely more than the pork dumplings with peanut butter sauce.

As you can see, there’s plenty to order on the appetizer menu. If you want to get these dishes à la carte, it’ll cost somewhere between $5–$7 per plate. And if you choose not to go all-you-can-mange, there are other options too. The steak teppan, cooked on an iron griddle with a fried egg and shrimp and noodles on the side, seemed nice enough, and there are also Japanese curries and teriyaki dishes.

There’s a lot to choose from, and the format is fun, but the food is inconsistent. Lu Mama won’t knock you out.