Berry Hom could do fine without another trip to Sky Harbor Airport, thanks very much. What with the heightened security there, and the never-ending construction in the area, it's an ordeal to navigate the sludge of traffic circling the terminals. But Hom does it, day in and day out, picking up the deliveries of seafood flown in fresh from his suppliers in Canada, Seattle and Los Angeles.
Jackie Mercandetti
You'll be rewarded for experimenting with your choices at Tao Garden.
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Congee with pork and preserved egg: $3.95
Salted fish, chicken and tofu
hot pot: $7.95
Beef and cilantro rice noodle soup: $4.50
Rock cod in black bean sauce: $7.50
Peking pork chop: $6.95
Roasted duck appetizer: $6.95
Live lobster or crabmarket price
480-857-4188. Hours: Lunch and dinner, Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
2050 North Alma School, Chandler
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Hom has no choice. As co-owner of Chandler's new Tao Garden Chinese restaurant, he'd have some truly unhappy souls to answer to if he didn't make the effort. Me, for example. When I come in, and it's often since I discovered his wonderful place at Alma School and Warner, I expect fresh fish. So fresh, it's alive when I order it. So spunky, I can see it cavorting about in the three tanks mounted in the wall of Tao Garden's entry. So pristine, it tastes of pure sparkling ocean or stream.
Hom would also have some explaining to do to another customer, whom he can't name but can identify by appetite. This gentleman comes in faithfully, Hom tells me, on a mission: to eat his way through each and every one of the menu's more than 210 dishes. So far, he's managed 45 different plates. A guy this fanatical is not someone a restaurant owner wants to meet in a dark alley after shrugging and saying, "Sorry, no fresh fish today, it was too much of a hassle."
So Hom goes to the airport, loading up his vehicle with still-kicking lobster, feisty crab, tilapia, rock cod, flatfish and sometimes catfish. His scallops and clams are still breathing when he carts them into the kitchen; he plans to bring in live shrimp too, he says.
Hom's work is admirable, though frankly, I wouldn't do it if it were my restaurant. The last time I braved the airport was a few weeks ago, to pick up my sister Elisabeth, the wild child stopping home from college. Just getting to the north curb of Terminal Four was like invading a small country, the lanes barricaded with concrete partitions, flashing traffic lights, uniformed officers with guns and dogs . . . I felt like a criminal being there, and I didn't even have to get out of my car. Luckily, Elisabeth is young and agile; I barely slowed down as I rolled past, throwing open the passenger door while she catapulted herself inside.
Forget the airport. If I ran Tao Garden, I'd drive one mile west for my live fish, to Lee Lee Oriental Supermarket on Dobson and Warner, that 52,000-square-foot emporium of exotica already brimming with tanks of live crab, mussels, clams, tilapia, catfish and carp. But what do I know about the shopping strategies of restaurateurs? I'm here to eat, and thanks to Hom's dedication, there are few better places in town than Tao Garden at which to do it.
Though this is Hom's first restaurant, he has a history with one of the Valley's finest Chinese establishments, Best Hong Kong Dining in Mesa. Live fish frolic in tanks there, too. Best's menu is broad, with enormous portions at ridiculously low prices. So Hom has taken the best of the Best, and put it in his own strikingly clean, seashell-wallpapered, polished wood and plant lush restaurant. He runs the show with his wife Yeemon, but the real art is left up to his chef, who, Hom says, "just makes things up -- with brilliance." The chef is Heung Ming Fong, also relocated from Best Hong Kong.
I'm not going to dissect the food too much here. I'm not going to go into laborious detail about the differences between the many regional varieties of Chinese food, the ooh-aah aspect of such unfamiliar-to-Americans edibles as fish maw, crispy fried milk, preserved mustard greens, or the outrageous blending of ingredients that make Cantonese and Mandarin cooking so comparable to elegant French cuisine. I'm just going to recommend that diners do as I've done -- and as that customer with a mission does -- point at something, anything, on Tao's menu, and eat it. As an old Cantonese saying goes, "Anything that walks, swims, crawls, or flies with its back to heaven is edible" (The Chinese Kitchen, by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo).
Hom is pleased with my philosophy. Too many "Caucasians," as he calls us, limit their experience to the safe choices of sweet and sour pork, beef and broccoli, kung pao shrimp or chicken chow mein. Tao does do a superb job with these standbys, dressing the high-grade ingredients in whispery light, refined sauces that put mainstream sugar and cornstarch-choked versions to shame. The friendly dishes make for a fabulous, filling, cheap lunch for just $4.50, including better than ordinary egg drop or hot and sour soup, a crispy egg roll, fluffy fried rice, fresh fruit, and, if we're lucky, a freebie of a terrific crunchy crab puff brimming with cream cheese. Anything with prawns, in particular, is excellent, bringing mounds of meaty marvelous specimens with clean, almost lobster-rich flavor.
Yet I'm face first in a huge bowl of something much more interesting. It's congee, a white rice porridge that's much like steaming hot cream of rice, and comes spiked with foods like dried scallops and chicken, prawns and lettuce, chicken and creamed corn, minced beef and preserved vegetables, or my choice today, slivers of pork and slabs of preserved egg (it tastes like hard-boiled ova, with an intriguing green-black color). Next, I'm spooning fat mouthfuls of salted fish, chicken and tofu hot pot, a ceramic crock bubbling with an earthy broth of hoisin, soy and shallot. A random request for beef stew hot spot is more surprising to typical "Caucasian" taste buds, given that the big bowl of slippery ramen noodles and meaty stock bobs with big chunks of tripe and tendon. Whatever; I love it all.
