Commentary: Hipstix adds Asian fusion to Tchoup restaurant row

New Orleans CityBusiness, Jun 23, 2008 by Tom Fitzmorris

Hipstix

$$

Warehouse District: 870 Tchoupitoulas St.

581-2858

Lunch Monday through Friday. Dinner Monday through Saturday

www.hipstixasianfusion.com

The Tchoupitoulas Restaurant Row.

I can't say that without hesitation. And it's not because I don't know how to pronounce "Tchoupitoulas."

Anyone old enough to read this newspaper remembers Tchoupitoulas Street downtown as a long row of rough-looking warehouses, not as a place to go for nightlife.

Now it's one cafe after another for blocks and blocks. Some of them -- notably Lucy's Retired Surfer Bar and Grill -- collect a sidewalk full of young adults hanging out after a day at work. A lot of them live in the neighborhood. If any have the urge to move upscale for dinner, they can do so within a block or two.

At the other end of Emeril's block of Tchoupitoulas is Hipstix. It is indeed hip, and if you are, too, you'll grab the chopsticks. They're in a caddy in the middle of the table, along with napkins and Sriracha hot sauce in a big, clear squeeze bottle. The latter is now as much a fixture in Asian restaurants as Tabasco is everywhere else.

The caddy's contents suggest we're in a Vietnamese restaurant. And we are, sort of. But you find almost as much Thai food on the menu. As those two cuisines go, the range of Hipstix's menu options is sparing. More like that of an American gourmet bistro, with about a dozen and a half each of first courses and entrees.

Let's start with these Mama Pham's Asian wings. Chicken wings have always been a staple appetizer on Thai menus, but these might remind you more of Wow.

They're good, though -- uncoated fried drummettes and those two- bone center wing joints, served with a golden, tangy mayonnaise- like sauce. The wings are too hot to handle when they emerge, but you'll find it hard to resist letting yourself be burned. These are good, and they give you enough to split among a table of four with a beer or a cocktail.

The fried egg rolls and the fresh Vietnamese spring rolls are good. The former are big-gauge, jammed with shrimp, crabmeat, and pork shreds. The spring rolls are more refreshing this time of year, with cool boiled shrimp visible through the rice paper. It wraps the shrimp with a pillow of rice noodles (also cool) and sliced pork. On the side is Thai peanut sauce with a squirt of Sriracha; I recommend squirting some more in there.

Hipstix used to have a Vietnamese classic called bo tai chanh. It's basically raw ground beef seasoned heavily with lime juice atop a salad, and Vietnamese restaurants are hesitant enough to serve it to you that it just fell off Hipstix's menu. But it's good, and I'm hoping my mentioning it here brings it back.

The noodle bowls traditional Vietnamese restaurants call "bun" are here but at double the traditional price (Hipstix isn't expensive but bun dishes are usually absurdly cheap). It's grilled meat on top of rice noodles served at room temperature or cooler. I love this stuff. Here you can get grilled chicken, those savory Asian style pork meatballs, or a stir-fry of beef on top of the noodles. Or a Vietnamese oddity: noodles topped with egg rolls. Any of these makes a good light lunch for around $10.

"Siam street noodles" heats up this concept into a full-fledged pasta dish, tossed with rare beef slices (you could also have this with shrimp or chicken) and a thick coconut milk and peanut sauce. It's mildly spicy, fresh-tasting and pretty good. It's different from the familiar pad Thai, which is also available. That has more of a pepper kick.

Both bring way too much food to the table, with the usual miracle: you're uncomfortably full if you eat it all, but the sensation lasts only a few minutes.

The kitchen here gets creative, even impressive, in its specialties. The fish with tomatoes, pineapple and mushrooms is a sleek dish. It was made with striped bass the night I tried it and had a light sauce that reminded me a little of Vietnamese hot fish soup but with much more going on. They call it a ragout, but that's a stretch even given the French heritage in Vietnam. Good dish.

So is the salmon curry, in which the fish is just touched by the Thai red curry sauce but the scallops are right in it. This one is elegant in appearance as well as taste.

If you have a shrimp Jones, an entree described simply as spicy shrimp is exactly that. It gets the same pepper-hot job done that barbecue shrimp does but with a different flavor profile, a little on the sweet side.

Hipstix's environment is clearly tuned to the likes of those people we see at Lucy's. The walls and ceilings are dark, the music is the kind I would never listen to on purpose (but didn't find disturbing), and the service staff is young and sophisticated. Things seem to get going here later in the evening.

Between the many Warehouse District residents and no small number of tourists, things are happening and the streets strike me as quite safe.

I'll report sporadically on other restaurants in the neighborhood during the coming months. It's one of the best areas of town to seek out a meal.