The Diplomatic Bastard: Why This Tiny Restaurant Matters

Halfway through dinner at Bastard, a Shanghainese friend began laughing at the dishes and their prices. He has plenty of money. He had just signed a restaurant consulting contract worth 50k a month — a side business to his real job, good for a little pocket money — but paying 38rmb for two pieces of fried tofu made him laugh in disbelief.

Another friend, not from China, told me he's only gotten angrier since eating at Bastard, calling it just a "mish-mash of different Chinese flavors."

A third, this time not a friend, said directly they would never eat Chinese food from a Western chef.

Bastard has, among the people I know, been controversial. The name hints at it, a low-key middle finger to people looking for a more traditional type of restaurant. Some people don't like it.

I love it.

When I came to China, a while ago now, I was a young line cook stuck in the fine dining world. I figured I'd stay for a year or two, maybe jump to Jean Georges for a while, and continue my slow climb to chef elsewhere.

China shook me out of that. It made me want to learn again, but not about spherification and sous vide techniques. It made me want to learn about Chinese food. I quit the (western) kitchen so I could do that, and, in my way, I've been doing it ever since. There was no textbook or professional school back then that could help. There still isn't. I gleaned what I could from restaurant meals, chef chats, and, as my Chinese improved, from a few Chinese-language books. But back then, and even today, there's a real lack of professional-level resources.

I pulled restaurant criticism from my left pocket while trying to stuff as much Chinese food knowledge as I could into the right pocket. I developed an idea that when evaluating food, the only thing that mattered was on the plate. It served me well, guiding me around traps like the decor (whether terrible or luxe) or reputation (whether terrible or legendary).

But it's not always true.

Michael J. and Jiro H. came into the restaurant industry later than I did, when they were already into their 20s. They had both been to college for other things before going into a kitchen and restaurant operations, respectively.

After Hong Kong, they moved to Shanghai, where Michael was the chef of Canton Disco at The Edition Hotel, at the time part of HK's Black Sheep Group. He had learned at the side of chefs in Black Sheep's Ho Lee Fook kitchen.

He tried — and failed — to break into traditional Cantonese kitchens, which weren't so enthusiastic about teaching their techniques to a white guy from Poland who didn't speak Cantonese.

After some moving around, leaving Shanghai and coming back, they decided to put their own money into realizing an idea they had been talking about for six years.

Bastard is their first restaurant, a mish-mash of Chinese flavors and regions, mostly Cantonese and Sichuanese. (When I put the "mish-mash" insult to Michael, he laughed and said, "I agree.") It's dark inside, far down a lane in Jing'an, kinda hard to find the first time.

If the soul of Canton Disco was about luxury and glamour, inspired by the wealth of 1980s Hong Kong, Bastard's soul is cyberpunk, DIY, the Kowloon Walled City. The music — Talking Heads, Can — is a little loud. The seats are crowded. The menu is not long and the dishes are mostly on the small side. It's easy to order the whole thing. They describe it as modern Chinese food.

I'm not even going to talk about what's on the plate. The dishes on their first menu are not nearly the most important thing about the restaurant. So this is not a dish-by-dish "review".

It's beside the point.

Michael Janczewski has gone farther than any of the other chefs, not just adding Chinese ingredients to a western cooking philosophy, but opening with a fully Chinese menu. At this point in his kitchen career, he's been cooking Chinese food longer than he cooked western food. But he's not Chinese and it's inevitable that he's going to be questioned about that.

I didn't have to look far for criticism, which they are not above, but I couldn't find much about their idea of the place, and how they see it. They don't spend much time on marketing.

So I sat down with Michael and Jiro and asked.

"There's an idea of what a Chinese restaurant must look like," they told me. "But we wanted to change this idea or perception of Chinese food and how it looks, and do something you don't expect."

"It's dark in Bastard, it's more colorful, more vibrant, hipster-ish. It's not the same stuff," they said. "There's different ways of having fun with Chinese food. We are here to say you don't have to do it the traditional way. You can do it your own way. Express yourself."

"Sometimes guests will ask me if the chef is from Sichuan," Jiro told me. "When people ask what food we serve, I say mod-Chinese food, but I think they're quite confused. This genre and the idea challenge the public — not just that it's a foreign chef doing Chinese food."

When I talked with Michael about the food philosophy, and what difference and similarities there are between global cuisines and global chefs, he kept it simple. "Taste never lies," he told me. It is, for him, another low-key middle finger to the approach of weighing down food with techniques and sometimes forgetting that "food is just food — don't overthink it."

I also wanted to hear their perspective on the criticism I've heard myself or read on Dianping, and give them a chance to respond.

Dianping: Shanghai has plenty of fake western restaurants, but now it finally has a fake Chinese restaurant.

"Well, I guess we are a pioneer of the genre! They say it's good, it's not the easiest, to be a pioneer, but at least we are first!"

Some people: It's not original.

"If it's not, let me know another restaurant that serves this kind of food, point it out, I'm happy to go there... Getting char siu, listening to Psycho Killer, having a highball — that doesn't happen in every other place."

My friend: It's way too expensive for what it is.

"I can say that about many other restaurants that serve western food. But people seem to look down on Chinese food unless it's fine dining. We care about the ingredients that we are using, and sorry, those are not the cheapest. That's the only way to justify it. I agree, you can get a char siu on rice anywhere for 58rmb but where is this pork coming from? You don't know. Here, we are using Iberico pork and it comes with a higher price tag. So for people who care about the ingredients, just even the produce, they know that."

A prominent food world person: I'm not eating Chinese food from a Western chef.

"But he's eating French food from Chinese chefs? It's not even a criticism for me. I had plenty of these comments when I was running Canton Disco. It was expected. This is just being racist — it's not even a criticism. Very backwards. You don't necessarily have to be Chinese to cook Chinese food. Food doesn't always have to stick to tradition. There's as many ways to do something as there are people."

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I support Bastard because I support western chefs learning about and experimenting with Chinese food. I see myself in Michael and Jiro, back when I bailed on the Western fine dining world and started to look at China as the teacher.

It's not just them.

I support the guys at Yaya's and now Paulo de Souza at The Merchants and Blake when he was cooking at Oha Cafe and Yann Klein at Maison Lameloise and anyone else who is trying to learn from China.

(It matters equally that there are younger Chinese chefs who are experimenting with Chinese cuisines, and here I'm thinking of Zou Mingyang at the Oha Group and even Zhang Yi (both women! yeah!), who recently won the San Pellegrino China Best Young Chef Award.)

Do I like all their food, every time? Do I like all the business models? No, I don't.

Bastard really speaks to me because it's most my style. I like the Talking Heads and dark alleys more than white tablecloths and tedious garnishes.

But this is bigger than that.

These chefs matter even more in the global climate we are living in, as other countries and people turn away from China.

It matters that there is a dialogue between western chefs and China, that they are investing their time and their money into trying to understand the country and its cuisines, and, in an era of de-coupling, that they are engaging.

It just happens to be through a restaurant.

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Photos: Elsa Bouillot