Dragon King's Daughter

Neil has a lot of family members, and the other day I started working on a family tree for both our families so I could try to get a handle on some of his extended relations. If you take a look right here you can see the tree starting with Albert Andriot, Neil's great-grandfather, also known as Pop.

When Neil's great-aunt Betty passed away a few months ago, the funeral turned out to be a bit of a family reunion, and it was decided that everybody should start trying to get together for dinner once a month. In honor of Pop, the Andriot family patriarch, the group named itself the Dining Popitos (which people keep accidentally calling the Flying Popitos, which is awesome).

The Dining Popitos met this week at Dragon King's Daughter. This place is owned by the same folks as my beloved Maido, but it's very different, with a lot of fusiony stuff; there's sushi, but also sushi-inspired pizzas and tacos, as well as a variety of other Asian-flavored small plates. (Although I haven't had it, I love the fact that there's a tako taco.)

Neil and I had been to Dragon King's Daughter twice before, and the last time the service was pretty bad. Not so bad that I refused to return, as I did with Third Avenue Cafe for almost two years, but bad enough to put me off of the place a little bit. Still, I was excited when it was announced that this was the Dining Popitos' selection for April, and I looked forward to trying it again.

I want to love Dragon King's Daughter the way I love Maido, but the fact is, it's just pretty good. The food is tasty, but it doesn't totally blow my mind, and the service is friendly but remains inattentive.

We started with some edamame, which is more or less the same wherever you get it, and that was fine. Next we had tuna tataki (which we didn't photograph until we'd already dug into it):


Slightly seared ahi tuna slices on a bed of fresh organic spring mix, served with Hawaiian pink salt, avocado-wasabi and fried garlic chips.

Neil didn't care for the fried garlic chips, assessing them as "just little bits of burned garlic," but I did. I actually thought this whole thing was pretty divine; the tuna was fresh and perfectly seared, and the avocado-wasabi mixture was a nice complement, although it could have used some more wasabi. I was a little sad we had to share this with the rest of the table.

Next up was a sushi roll, Sushi and the Banshees. Neil didn't email me a photo of this, so I'll have to check with him later and see if he has one. Cream cheese, garlic, avocado inside... salmon and basil outside. This was just okay. I thought the basil was an interesting flavor to encounter in a sushi roll, but there was a little too much cream cheese and it overwhelmed the roll's other components.

Then we had the unagi pizza:


Unagi, avocado, scrambled eggs and cheese—topped with unagi sauce.

In the last, oh, six months or so, I have realized that I am totally batshit in love with unagi. I remember trying it and not liking it at some point, and I didn't eat it for years. But then I tried it again and it totally rocked my world. I admit that I was a little unsure about the scrambled eggs and cheese on this pizza, but the idea of an unagi pizza was too compelling for me not to try it. So we did. Neil really liked it, but for me the flavors just didn't work together very well. The baked avocado was especially off-putting; I would have preferred for that to be added after the fact.

We ended the meal with a tempura fried Snickers bar with red bean ice cream. Yes, really.



What can you even say about a tempura fried Snickers bar? It's a fun novelty of a dessert, not orgasmically delicious, but worth trying at least once.

We also had tastes of a few things that other people were eating, and I especially liked the wasabi salsa: Fresh wasabi, diced tomato , avocado, mango, jalapeños, red onions, garlic, cilantro and lime juice mixed together and served with fried wonton chips. The wonton chips were outstanding, although for something with wasabi in the name, the salsa didn't have much of a kick to it.

Our server was friendly (and didn't make condescending comments about our beer choices the way our server did the last time we were there), but he disappeared for long stretches of time, and we had to wait quite a while before he came back to take our dessert orders.

Overall, I like Dragon King's Daughter, and I think to a big extent it just requires some tolerance for trial and error; I won't order the unagi pizza again, but I know from previous visits that I like the sashimi pizza. The tuna tataki was a big hit, and I could totally make meal out of that and some salsa and wontons. I'm also looking forward to trying their happy hour; that sounds like just the thing for the band of food- and booze-loving freelancers I hang out with. (The best thing about freelancing is - by far - drinking beer with my self-employed friends while the rest of you poor suckers are at work. Too bad I'm about to give all that up this fall so I can go back to school and become a social worker!)

Anyway, Dragon King's Daughter, final verdict: Try it. You might like it!