I was REALLY looking forward to Palette 22 (P22). I’m a huge fan of bottomless small plate restaurants and when I saw the menu of P22, I knew I had to go. I don’t know how P22 describes themselves but I would say it’s Asian cuisine with Latin flare or maybe Latin cuisine with Asian flare.
The Korean cheese corn was one of my favorite dishes. Made with mozzarella, scallions, sweet peppers, and kewpie mayo, it was served in a skillet. I love corn and I love dishes that feature corn. It had a little kick which is nice but would have liked it to be a little thicker and creamier. If they served it with tortilla chips, I’d love it even more.
The pork and shrimp lumpias with garlic, napa cabbage, carrots, ginger, soy, and spicy lime vinaigrette dip was disappointing. I mean it didn’t taste bad per se. It was just unremarkable. You couldn’t taste any of the individual ingredients and I was very much left wanting.
The crispy shrimp tacos were fine. The shrimp were lightly breaded and topped with sambal chili mayo which was flavorful and provided a little kick.
I tried two of their bao buns, the hoisin glazed pork belly and bulgogi beef. Again, they both left me wanting. The sauces/spices were fine but the meat was way too lean and the buns were way too big for as little meat as they were filled with. I think if you use fattier meat and smaller buns, these two dishes are dynamite
The two sliders I had (spicy chili crisp fried chicken and pork tonkatsu) suffered from the same problems as the buns in one respect: the buns were way too large for the amount of meat on the slider. No one wants to eat a slider with two giant buns and a tiny piece of meat. Just make the buns small if you’re not going to make the protein larger. The flavors were fine but the bread completely overwhelmed the dishes.
The highlight of the meal was the butter chicken tikka masala. It was a little sweeter than the typical tikka masala but not sweet. The sauce was as you’d expect, and the chicken was perfectly cooked. I would order this dish as an entrée itself.
For dessert, I had the churros which came with chocolate and dulce de leche dipping sauces. Again, it was fine. I think the churros were overcooked. They were dense and not airy as they typically are. The sauces were tasty but too thin. Churros should be able to hold sauce without it running off and these just didn’t.
Overall, I was underwhelmed. I had high hopes for this place. Just reading the menu, there wasn’t a single thing I didn’t want to try. After trying ten of their offerings, I just felt like they missed the mark on several of them. I had a few plates I liked (including the cobb salad that I didn’t review) but there were more misses than hits. I think some of the issues can be rectified and I plan to come back to see if they are but I’m disappointed that my experience wasn’t what it could have been.
