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Mural by local artist Wingchow (Photo by Justin Chesney)
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Chicken inasal with crab fat rice, bok choy, lemongrass and ginger (Photo by Justin Chesney)
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Sisig, thrice-cooked pork, chilies, calamansi and an onsen egg (Photo by Justin Chesney)
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Co-owners Chef Ian Merryman and Front of House Manager Devon Halbert (Photo by Justin Chesney)
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The Aloecated Ration, a cocktail with rum, falernum, pineapple and aloe (Photo by Justin Chesney)
In the world of food and drink these days, when restaurants are vying harder than ever for your attention, novelty trumps nearly everything else. Which is one explanation for the explosion, in recent years, of the genre of hipster Asian — restaurants that pride themselves on authenticity and infuse their raw, dark spaces with an aggressive punk ethos, as if putting out plates of food for guests were akin to making rock ’n’ roll in a garage.
The latest name chef to adopt the idiom is Tiny Victory’s Ian Merryman, who, you may recall, was for many years the presiding muse at Millie’s Diner and the creator of The Jackdaw, a three-year pop-up series.
And the cuisine Merryman has chosen to showcase at his new venture, called Tiny Victory and situated on a somewhat overlooked block of Broad Street downtown? No, not northern Thai or central Thai or even street food Thai. No, not sushi or Szechuan or Hunan. Hipster Asian prizes the shock of the new and the obscure. Accordingly, Tiny Victory, as The Jackdaw did before it, aims to showcase the many charms of Filipino cuisine, something so little in evidence in this city (there are only just a few restaurants in D.C., too, most notably the drive-worthy Bad Saint) and so far from the culinary ground that Merryman trod at Millie’s that Richmonders are bound to be mystified when they get a load of the menu.
Which is a good deal of the point. To put you, the diner, in a position of submission and, or so the hope fervently goes, awe.
This is not, of course, to everybody’s taste, and that is a good deal of the point, too — enforced marginalization, the better to position the restaurant as outré, as special, as distinct.
I’ve been just about drowning in hipster Asian cooking over the past few years, in D.C. and in many of the bigger cities on the coasts. It’s not that these chefs show insufficient respect for the traditions they draw upon. On the contrary, there is, almost always, not merely respect but reverence. The problem, the rub, is that it’s easier to honor tradition than it is to master technique. Much of the food at these restaurants is passable, but little of it is excellent.
Tiny Victory in its very early days fits somewhere in between those poles, sometimes the former, but more often (and the sincere hope here is that “more often” can become “much more often”) the latter.
The points of emphasis in Filipino cooking are so different from what the average American thinks constitutes dinner out as to make every meal something of an excursion. Come prepared to exercise patience, and also to submit to an adventure — whether it’s the sweet but oddly ashen taste of a charred coconut paste lurking at the bottom of a bowl of raw tuna or the subtly fatty, musky flavor of rice punched up with crab fat, aka the orange tomalley most pickers toss away. When the kitchen is good, it’s very, very good, and dinner can be thrilling and even, at times, eye-opening — in the way that the familiar (meats, fishes, vegetables that are a part of your daily routine) is made unfamiliar and, alternatively, in the way that the unfamiliar can deliver pure and abiding comfort.
Inconsistencies, however, sometimes undermine the force of many otherwise exciting plates — that crab fat rice turned up gummy on one visit (on another, it was sublime); a joint of roasted pork made for an unforgivably dry crispy pata, while a different night’s preparation of chicken inasal showed off gorgeously tender thigh and leg meat; another evening brought a baby bok choy that had been judiciously seared and seasoned and sang with the perfection of a simple thing fully realized, which just made the dumplings with overcooked fillings I had the next visit more vexing. And there are times, too, when the cooking slips into the bad habits of food truck cooking, trading on salt and fat and heat for effect.
I have faith that these early issues will eventually work themselves out. There’s a seriousness here that belies the whimsy of the operation, from the neon-pink bar sign (GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS) to the street art-meets-Rousseau mural of a tiger that commands one wall to the playful (but punch-packing) cocktails. If Merryman can just work a little harder to mind the details as he explores his interest in these intense and popping flavors, then good things await.
3.5 out of 5 stars
506 W. Broad St.
804-658-0757
Hours: Wednesday through Monday, 5 p.m. to 2 a.m.; closed Tuesdays
Prices: $7 to $26
