On Monday evening of Restaurant Week, my wife and I visited Kudeta, which spices up the southeast corner of Temple and Crown Streets.
Its exoticism is apparent even before one enters the restaurant.
Even the table settings tell the tale.
I have known owners Herry Darbi and Elaine Chao for perhaps thirteen years, reviewing three of their Fairfield County restaurants. The veteran restaurateurs have flawless design instincts. The original Little Kitchen of Westport was just a hole in the wall, but its larger successor is one of Connecticut’s more nicely decorated restaurants. The same could have been said of Taipan, which was located across the Post Road from the second Little Kitchen and featured a magical blue water course under its dining room floor. That space has just been transformed into the latest Thali. And Chao owns Chao Chao in Newtown, which I hear is also extremely attractive.
But Kudeta has featured my favorite Connecticut restaurant décor since it opened a few years ago. I have referred to it as “Hong Kong brothel,” and that may not sound like a compliment, but it’s very much meant as one. The phrase is meant to convey its Asian sensibilities, its sexiness, its eerie lighting, its charged atmosphere. My photos don’t begin to do it justice, because I didn’t use a tripod. When I used the camera flash, it erased the colored lighting, which gradually changes from one hue to another. And my efforts to shoot without flash, steadying the camera on a pillow, produced only passable results. But take a tour of the restaurant with me anyway…
When you enter Kudeta, there is lounge space on either side of the entrance.
Check out these hollowed-out canoes filled with fresh fruit
and floating blossoms.
This handsome young fellow was doing some checking out of his own.
Proceeding straight ahead past the reception area, you’ll encounter an active bar,
while down the corridor to the right you’ll find the sushi room and bar.
That corridor itself is magical, the reason for my “Hong Kong brothel” label. Lined with stained glass,
it has a mysterious and endless quality to it,
but its otherworldly sophistication would only be revealed by a flashless photograph that caught its changing colors, and there was nowhere to rest my camera and shoot at slow speed. Picture the hallway glowing with magenta lighting, and you begin to get the idea.
There are numerous cool design details. Next to our table was a larger round table enclosed by a circular cage with draperies over it. I didn’t shoot it because I didn’t wish to intrude on the group—plus they sounded like lawyers. (I suppose this is where I should joke that the world could use a few more lawyers behind bars, but I’m a graduate of University of Michigan law school myself.) There is another little lounge space to the left of the bar.
Note the translucent sliced agates in the wall, a recurring feature of the restaurant, which you would see glowing mysteriously from backlighting if I hadn’t utilized my camera flash. Further to the left is a slightly raised area with banquette seating.
When I remove the flash, you can see how the agates set into the wall glow.
One of the restaurant’s most interesting features is a glass “obelisk” in the center of the main dining room, a sort of “aviary” with beautiful mounted tropical butterflies instead of birds.
Here is the display in purple light,
in blue light,
and in pink light.
The food also benefits from Asian sensibilities and a good design sense. Take, for instance, these crispy Thai seafood rolls that are tied off at each end to look like scrolls.
The dish tastes as good as it looks, the rolls light crisp and greaseless, the dip sweet and spicy, a julienne slaw on the side. Flavorful Mongolian lamb kebabs were another winner.
Other appetizer options included crispy shrimp and cheese wontons, Thai-style pan-fried calamari and steamed crabmeat and pork mini-buns.
There were five entrees to choose from as well. We didn’t try sautéed Shanghai butterfly shrimp, chicken with crispy spinach and hot peppers, or a Mongolian lamb curry. However, we couldn’t resist trying Kudeta’s sushi dinner, which featured two large fancy rolls.
One was a dynamite roll made of tuna, salmon, yellowtail, avocado, spicy mayonnaise and tempura flakes wrapped in soybean paper,
the other a what-a-roll made of shrimp tempura, avocado and spicy mayonnaise wrapped in kani (faux crab).
Both rolls were exceptional, the combinations well conceived, the seafood sparklingly fresh.
The other entrée that caught our eye was Kudeta’s dry sautéed Szechwan shredded beef. Szechwan food has been my cooking specialty since 1980, so I can say with conviction that Kudeta’s version isn’t an especially authentic rendering. I once sought out an obscure restaurant in Kowloon just because it was said to have an exceptional dry-fried beef. Properly made, the dish cooks down to an almost paste-like consistency—but the fast-fried caramelized versions that one more often finds in restaurants are obviously more practical.
Authenticity notwithstanding, Kudeta’s dry-fried beef is a fun dish, albeit a little sweet. A pile of flavorful shredded beef with a bit of scallion and jalapeño is corralled by a bok choy border, with scallion pancakes wedges theatrically poised at the corners.
The scallion pancakes and bok choy offset the meat’s sweetness considerably.
And finally, for dessert two bombas were offered, a classic bomba with a maraschino cherry and vanilla and chocolate gelato encased in a dark chocolate shell,
and a dream bomba with peanut butter gelato and a caramel center encased in milk chocolate.
As you can see, my wife enjoyed her dessert mightily.
And now I conclude with a photograph of Kudeta manager Jeff Chai posing with our terrific waitress, Prima.
Kudeta, 27 Temple Street, New Haven, 203-562-8844