Food piece

Review

There's this trend among Asian restaurants, particularly those with a Thai focus, to start dipping into the cuisines of every neighboring country that's established a culinary foothold in the United States. Most of the time it takes the form of shoehorning a sushi bar into the place, but some go all out and borrow from everywhere.

That's how you get a menu like the one at O-Cha. The starters are loaded with every possible form of pasta wrapped around meat and veggie, from multiple fried eggrolls to four different stuffed wontons. Entrees are largely Thai in style, but also dip into culturally degraded favorites like vaguely Chinese General Tao's chicken, kinda Japanese teriyaki salmon and a full range of sushi. All things to all people, if those people want an average meal.

And, as I discovered a few weeks back when I visited downtown's Tropical Thai, trying to please the masses usually results in the kind of food that you can find at a half-dozen other places around town. That's not going to set you apart, and it's also not going to seduce you into a second visit.

Enough meta-gaming the restaurant scene, how about O-Cha's food, you ask? Well, it's fine. No matter what ethnicity they have to adopt for a particular dish, all of the food comes out with a similar blandness of character that will -- to put it kindly -- make it easy for you to follow the conversation of your guests or that magazine you brought along for company.

Fried eggrolls ($3.95) are thin and typical, with sticky chili sauce for dipping. Curry puffs ($6.95) are over-fried, with a filling that is supposed to be potatoes and chicken but looks like curried paste tinted grey. Miso soup ($2.95) has none of the burst of salty soybean that makes this simple dish worth downing, but tom yum ($4.95) carries enough kick of tart acidity and spice to make it worth a go.

O-Cha's teriyaki ($14.95-17.95), like a lot of the restaurant's sauces, is exceedingly sweet, turning anything it coats into protein candy. Great for the kids, maybe, but not worth the price of admission. More sugar plays a big part in pad woon sen ($9.95-17.95), with little fish sauce, garlic or cilantro to counteract the sweetness.

Curries tend to be watery and muted, so when you order them hot there's little to compete with the harshness of dried chile. Actually, that's the problem with almost everything across the entrée list -- flavors so muted and simple, there's little for your tastebuds to grab onto.

Admittedly, the place is stylish. O-Cha transformed a former spare and depressing Chinese take-out joint into a pleasant space that provides a calm alternative to the boisterous Tijuana Flats next door. The servers are pleasant and competent.

The place has only been open for a month, so there's still time for O-Cha to become special. If they can get the specialties down pat and cut extraneous dishes from the menu, maybe they can make a go as a sit-down restaurant. Or they can cut the prices and start papering the hospital with take-out menus. Make up your mind, O-Cha.

Good news?

A new restaurant has signed a lease for the Hillview space formerly occupied by the sadly departed Table. New York, New York bills itself as a restaurant, bar and "nite spot." Sounds radikal.

Ch-ch-changes

St. Armand's Cork and the Bottle Shop (29 N. Blvd. of the Presidents, St. Armands, 388-2675 or corkonthecircle.com) has gone through a lot of changes since it opened a couple of years ago, with the departure of chef Mac Decarle over a year ago and other personnel shifts. Things seem to be nicely settled now and the restaurant is instituting some changes.

First up, the Bottle Shop is going to be dropped. The ever confusing mélange of two restaurants in one space will cease, and the entire property will gradually shift to just Cork. You'll still be able to buy wine and liquor from the small retail component shoehorned into the bottom floor, and the lower half of the restaurant has also added breakfast.

It's a limited menu, but done with apparent style, with items like Bismarck french toast with orange custard batter and smoked salmon pizza with cream cheese and capers sharing space with the classic two-eggs and omelets. Breakfast is served from 7-11 a.m. weekdays, with brunch from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekends.

The lunch menu has changed as well since the early days, now focused less on the French bistro items that it started with and more on upscale modern American standards. Dinner? Well, it looks a tad more restrained and simple than Cork's early days of innovative fare, now more Mediterranean steakhouse than modern new American cuisine. We'll have to give them another visit to see how the changes stack up.