Ginger Hop's Asian fusion: promising, but far from perfect
Alexa Jones
Something doesn’t quite add up about recent Northeast addition Ginger Hop. Occupying the corner formerly home to jazz-and-fondue joint The Times Bar And Cafe, the restaurant sports a logo with “East meets N.E.” writ large across the bottom of the Grain Belt Brewery sign next to the Hennepin Avenue Bridge, and a Vietnamese rice paddy boat sailing by on the Mississippi below. And so you think Asian fusion, which is what the menu seems to promise, with a banh mi sandwich listed right next to fish and chips. Elsewhere, East meets West more dramatically in the “kimchi” Kulakofsky, a reuben topped with Sriracha mayo and the Korean national dish in place of sauerkraut.
The space: Despite some nice decorative touches, like the fin-shaped ceiling fans that wave to and fro in the bar, the space still feels essentially like The Times and, as such, not distinctively Asian. Sure, in some ways it may evoke colonial Southeast Asia, but that’s more due to the leftover British pub feel of The Times.
The drinks: Full marks, though, for the excellent beer selection, including Cane & Ebel’s Red Rye Ale ($5.75), a far richer and more interesting red than Killian’s, and the Wong Island cocktail (Canton ginger liquor with tequila, gin, triple sec, and lime juices, for $8), which delivered on the promise of a refreshing, citrus-and-ginger-flavored drink.
The food: Ginger Hop's menu, however, didn’t fare quite as well. The menu offers both traditional cream cheese wontons ($5) and cream cheese and caramelized onion wontons ($5.50), but the caramelized onion addition seemed disappointingly minor. The flavor was there, more or less, but where were the sweet, hearty onions themselves? We could only find a few transparent flecks nestled in the cream cheese that might or might not have been onions. The sesame soy sauce for dipping was the best part of the whole thing.
The General Tsing’s chicken ($10.50), which adds Tsingtao beer to the familiar General Tso’s Chicken, was exceptional only in its overwhelming spiciness. Whatever flavor the beer added was completely lost in the sheer heat of the dish, a familiar problem from chains like P.F. Chang’s that substitute spiciness for genuine flavor. There was no sense in which General Tsing’s chicken improved upon the General Tso’s available at Chinese restaurants like Shuang Cheng.
The banh mi ($8.75) presented itself with a nice smoky flavor from the pork loin and the grilled French bread, but there was something off about the creaminess of the pâté. The bread was hot, the pork loin was cold, the flavor of the cilantro overwhelmed by everything else, and the end result was a mishmash that pales next to more authentic versions of the Vietnamese sandwich.
Ginger Hop seems to be struggling to come into its own. Its dishes hold enormous promise as inventive rethinkings of traditional fare from Thailand and the rest of Southeast Asia, but the actual results currently seem more generic and akin to the fare at Big Bowl or Chang’s. For one of those restaurants, the food would be fine, but a hip joint in Northeast should give you more. With time and some menu adjustments, there’s every reason to hope that Ginger Hop will refine its formula and wind up with food that really delivers.
Economic impact: Quite reasonable; most entrées, including sandwiches, and stir-fry items and curries hover around $9-$11, up to a $19 surf-or-turf. Most desserts are $5 or $6.
Vital stats: 201 E. Hennepin Ave. 612-746-0304, gingerhop.com. Monday to Saturday, open 11 a.m. to 1 a.m.; Sunday, open 3 to 10 p.m.
