Zoé Tong fails to bring exciting new energy to Austin’s Barton Springs Road | Review
There is an odd dichotomy in the Austin restaurant world: Barton Springs Road is at once both known as “Restaurant Row” and also a stretch that is home to “cursed locations.”
The restaurant boom on the street just south of Lady Bird Lake started in the early 1980s with the opening of Chuy’s in 1982. Neighboring Baby Acapulco’s (1987) and Green Mesquite (1988) at the eastern end of the road opened a few years later. While those three have anchored the Row, the space between them has hosted a game of musical chairs for decades.
Austinites of a certain vintage probably remember the names: Pizza Nizza, Austin Java, Shady Grove, Romeo’s, Umami Mia, Good Eats Cafe, Mimosa Cafe, Uncle Billy’s Brew & Smokehouse and Austin Eastciders (to name a handful) have come and gone over the last 35 years. Those last four all occupied the space at 1530 Barton Springs Road.
With all of that movement and with other parts of town from Cedar Park to East Austin boasting stretches dense with quality restaurants, the idea that Barton Springs Road would be known as Restaurant Row probably feels like a quaint or confusing idea to many newcomers.
But late last year, the Row welcomed something it has rarely seen: accomplished out-of-town chefs. Sichuan native Simone Tong and husband, Brooklyn-born Matt Hyland, relocated to Austin in the early days of the pandemic to start a family and open Chinese restaurant Zoé Tong.
Tong’s modern Chinese restaurant in New York City’s East Village, Silver Apricot (in which she is still a partner), opened in 2020 and has received significant praise from the New York Times, and Hyland co-founded multiple successful pizzerias in NYC (Pizza Loves Emily and Emmy Squared).
Pedigreed NYC chefs opening a Chinese restaurant (something the Row has always needed; sorry, Wanfu Too) … maybe that was just the combination to reverse the string of bad luck at the high-profile address that sees heavy foot traffic to Austin’s Barton Springs pool and Zilker Park playground.
The menu, an array of creative, modern takes on Sichuanese, Cantonese and Singaporean flavors, holds promise.
But some things sound better on paper.
Several visits to the restaurant generally resulted in heavy-handed flavor profiles or poor kitchen execution, and baffling (and baffled) service. Some dishes, such as the cold sesame noodles, tea-smoked duck, and pig ear salad, were good enough to keep a spark of hope flickering. But that flame dances with a furious exhaustion that lives at the edge of suffocation.
Curls of wood ear mushrooms, popping pearls of trout roe, slivers of melon and a shower of chili soil covered small bites of opaque smoked scallop ($22) on a colorful appetizer that couldn’t find harmony because of how hard it was to gather all of the components into a coherent bite.
The diffuse nature of that dainty dish gave way to one with a thick glob of fermented chili-infused mayonnaise (aka Zoe sauce) that served as the base for skewered quail eggs that took on none of the tannic whispers of their tea-steeped preparations ($9).
Over-sauciness befell other dishes, whether it was the excess of truffle oil in gummy wontons filled with chicken and truffle ($15), the pungent fermentation poking through a saccharine slick of char siu sauce on tough smoked pork ribs ($28), or the salt-and-sweet excess of miso-hoisin puddling a plate of black cod. Though braised bok choy on that fish dish, which was also laced with julienned peppers and thin-sliced radish, burst with a vibrancy that spoke to its local provenance.
Zoé Tong is sourcing much of its produce locally. A robust list of purveyors appears on the menu, which is a commendable application of local flavor and support of local culture, one much more natural than the odd #KeepAustinChinese tag line painted atop the restaurant’s exterior, which feels more like ham-fisted and tone deaf marketing than a deft understanding or integration into Austin culture.
But what about that promise? Yes, it was there in cold sesame noodles as nutty as a peanut buttery after-school snack and crunchy with cucumbers, scallions and fried shallots ($18); snappy pig ears zipped with chili vinaigrette, mala numbness from a spirited sprinkle of nuts freshened with bright herbs ($16); tender smoked and confit duck ($62) delivered for self-made wraps; and bouncy noodles packed with a tingly lamb grounded by earthy mushrooms ($28).
Trying to ascertain much about those and other dishes proved largely difficult, as most of the staff, outside of one exceptional server, possessed little menu knowledge. Unable to educate us on much of the menu, one server even talked us out of an extra dish or two.
I understand that we’re in an incredibly tight labor market and trying to hire and retain an invested staff is a challenge, but some of the stumbles at Zoé Tong felt avoidable. As did the incompleteness of the aesthetic.
The physical space at the address has always been a bit of an odd one, best suited for a long bar perfect for hours of drinking beer, crushing wings and watching sports, as during its Billy’s days. The interior has been bifurcated smartly with a bar and proper dining room, but the dining room, with its odd auto mechanic roll-up doors, feels slapdash in design. Geometric sound dampening panels on the wall stick out visually more than they mitigate the reverberating concrete floor, over which lanterns left behind from a Chinese New Year celebration add needed color and life, and “quirky” neon signage behind the bar feels like failed Instagram bait.
The decor, including some off-putting and out-of-place signage near the bathroom area, feels rushed and unconsidered. Those work-in-progress vibes extend to the programming and hours. Brunch was added in mid-April, and probably the less said about the lukewarm brisket-egg-and-cheese eggrolls that tasted plucked from the grocery freezer aisle ($14); the gritty congee and mealy shrimp ($26); burned soup dumplings ($18) and acrid pork belly breakfast sandwich ($12) the better.
Austin loves a brunch, so I understand the weekend addition (if not the execution), ditto adding barbecue to the mix. Zoé Tong in recent weeks announced the opening of Sí Baby-Q, its sister trailer that sits outside the restaurant, serving a menu of smoked brisket, ribs and chicken piqued with Indonesian and Chinese flavors. The multi-tiered patio, which echoed with darkened silence at two dinner visits, needs the activation and energy, but the addition of the barbecue trailer feels inorganic and rushed.
Sometimes doing less instead of more makes for sturdier footing. It leaves me wondering if Zoé Tong may not be a new chapter for Austin’s “Restaurant Row” as much as another cautionary tale.
Zoé Tong hours and menu highlights
1530 Barton Springs Road. 512-387-6671, zoetong.com.
Rating: 4.5 out of 10
Hours: Dinner: 5 to 9:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 5 to 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Brunch: 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
Highlights: Cold sesame noodles, tea-smoked duck, mushroom and lamb noodles.
Expect to pay: $65 (Price per person before drinks and tip.)
Notes: Complimentary valet parking (do not attempt to self park in garage), and paid parking on Barton Springs Road.
The Bottom Line: Stumbles in execution from front and back of house at Zoé Tong have tempered the excitement that came with the opening from two successful chefs from New York City.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Chinese restaurant Zoé Tong still searching for success in Austin
