Tradition blends locally to create surprising and delicious dishes

Oliver Friendly, chef and owner of the occasional supper club Bespoke Kitchen, and chef Sabine Jeanty prepare Chinese-style shredded cucumber for a dinner featuring creative Chinese dishes on March 3 in Washington. Friendly's team did research for weeks creating the menu inspired by cuisines from a variety of places in China. PHOTOS BY YUAN YUAN / FOR CHINA DAILY

It's hard to believe that a pudding made of tofu and topped with spicy minced pork and chives was Oliver Friendly's version of Mapo tofu, a popular dish originated from China's Sichuan province that features tofu in spicy sauce with minced meat.

"Realizing that we're not able to do an exactly authentic Chinese dish, we try to do our best version, we think, inspired from that dish," said Friendly, owner and chef of the Bespoke Kitchen in Washington, during the first night of the kitchen's new China themed dinner series.

Launched in January 2015, Bespoke Kitchen is a small scale occasional supper club run by chefs from Eat & Smile Catering that aims at "doing locally sourced, in-depth, complicated food". They were off erring four China nights, on Mar 3-4 and Mar 10-11.

"Each dinner series we do is based on a theme, so this one is based on Chinese cuisines," Friendly said. "We spend a lot of time, usually two to three weeks, not even creating the menu, just researching on the cuisines, the region or the theme."

He just finished the night's final course, a pancake with squash filling as a dessert inspired by the Chinese-style pan-fried pumpkin cake.

His team went through eight cookbooks focusing on specific regions including Canton and Sichuan cuisines and Beijing street food.

"All of them also have a history of the region — how a dish came to be based on what was available," he said.

From there, they came up with ideas, went out to Chinese restaurants to eat and again discussed their ideas to create their menu for their China nights, said fellow chef Sabine Jeanty.

"We are actually quite big fans of authentic Chinese food, so it was really kind of fun to see the different takes on the flavors that we know," said Deb Duncan, who came to the event with her friend Courtney Timberlake.

"It was all very light but had really good spices, so it was a lot of fun but still different from what we usually get," Duncan said.

Growing up in the Midwest with only Chinese buffets, Duncan's door into genuine Chinese food was opened by Timberlake, who grew up dining in New York City's Chinatown.

"Now it's one of my favorite foods. We've really liked Sichuan a lot lately," Duncan said.

Another diner, Bruce Tanzer, who also grew up in New York and is familiar with dining in typical Chinese restaurants, still remembers his childhood favorite dish — beef with tomatoes and black soy bean sauce — from the Chinese restaurant down the block from where he lived.

The Bespoke's version, though not the exact presentation of what Tanzer remembers, did offer him flavors that reminded him of it, he said.

"DC has a deep love of Chinese food," Friendly said, "second only to New York City. It's hard to find a DC resident who doesn't love Chinese food."

A fourth generation Washingtonian, Friendly's earliest exposure to Chinese food was when his parents took him to a Chinese restaurant and ordered a whole steamed flounder with chili and garlic sauce.