Slowly braised beef cheek in sweet soy sauce served in a hot stone bowl with garlic potato, dates, pecans & pine nuts.

After this boiling cauldron stops bubbling, I extract pieces of beef and potato from it, cognizant that it will be ridiculously hot.

The beef has a bit of that “concentrated meat” taste that slow-cooked food has, but it has a much stronger soy sauce flavour. I can’t see what’s what here, because the meat is completely brown. There’s a lot of fat in the meat, and the cooking has made it sticky and gelatinous, and somewhat unpleasant.

Heat problems persist until the end of the meal, including the evaporation of most of the last bit of liquid, leaving the last pieces of potato sitting in a super-salty liquid.

It’s also difficult to eat more than one thing at once here, because everything has to be cooked. This meant that the pecans and dates were largely ignored.

A bit of a dilemma here, regarding the dessert. There are only three items on the dessert menu. One is ice cream, and it’s not any fancy ice cream. Another is affogato, which is coffee with a dessert of ice cream and liqueur. (I don’t really like coffee OR alcohol, and this doesn’t seem that exciting anyway.) The final option is the Honey Nut Yuzu Pancake. This looks suspiciously similar to the aforementioned pancake. I won’t rate the pancake. Otherwise, every time I come here, the place will get a 9 for its dessert.