Kong

There was so much syrupy hoisin and sweet sauce streaked across my first dinner at Kong - Northern Liberties' new ode to Hong Kong street food - that it was pretty clear Michael O'Halloran's "authenticator" wasn't having the desired effect.

That's a tough spot to put your Chinese mother-in-law in ("authenticator," that is), especially when you and your team of chefs plan to stray as perilously far from the familiar as Kong's kitchen does. But that is exactly the role to which his wife's mother, Suet Ping Chiu, has been elected, the resident expert to lend O'Halloran's wide-ranging menu of dumplings, bar snacks, and noodle soups a little Hong Kong street cred.

I'm not challenging her credentials, but I have a hard time believing that many of the street markets there serve food slathered in as much treacle as O'Halloran's kitchen supplies.

The crispy chicken wings, tender enough from a brine and slow confit, are basted in a honeyed chile glaze that is all sweet and no tingle. The unpleasantly chewy spare ribs taste like they're dredged in a sticky pomade of sesame and hoisin. The house-cured bacon comes atop a lettuce wrapper in such a thick slab of fat-ribboned meat shined with honey that it was like eating a porcine candy bar.

Having visited Hong Kong with his in-laws, O'Halloran, chef-owner of well-liked Bistro 7 in Old City, certainly knows what's authentic. But he has decided to use those inspirations loosely. Those raw pig liver-vinegar dishes and stir-fried fish-gut omelets he enjoyed in that city's "dai pai dong" open air markets? He's assumed (correctly!) they might not fly in Northern Liberties.

But he's overcompensated for Western palates in the liberties he's taken here, and then executed that vision poorly. The "authenticator" can't be blamed for that. This wasn't just a weak take on Chinese inspirations, this was weak cooking, period.