It’s a good thing modern Asian decor at Surah, 1121 Bethlehem Pike, inspires calm — because the drive out to Spring House is outrageously long. We don’t know how you bedroom-community commuters do it.
But we’ve had a good string of luck with restaurants in suburban strip malls, and Surah is no exception. Specializing in Korean and Japanese fare, Surah is at its best when it is being adventurous.
Even something simple like miso soup ($3.95) gets tinkered with for the better with the addition of honey mushrooms, which provide a subtle new dimension to the standard flavor.
If your taste tends to be strictly safe vanilla, you can make a beeline to dishes like the salmon teriyaki, which, while well-executed, has all the excitement of buffet food. But Surah’s menu shines when the chefs are allowed to go a little crazy.
We were treated to some specials — dishes they are considering for permanent status on the menu — which were the real standouts.
The tuna tataki salad, thinly sliced on a bed of greens, was fresh and well-seasoned. Then there was the tuna sundae, sushi-grade tuna and avocado dressed with spicy mayo and fish roe, which was a roller-coaster ride of flavors and textures. It might have been a little heavy-handed with the avocado, but otherwise it hit the spot.
The other special was a scallop wrapped in crispy phyllo dough, and it instantly became our new favorite way to eat scallops. (Sorry, scallops: We know you are on every menu we see these days, but if you come to us any other way but this, we may still eat you but we will not love you.)
Out of the corner of our eye, we see the waitress coming at us holding a plate with flames coming off of it. That can’t be for us, we’ve got sushi coming. That’s our sushi roll? OK, now you’re just showing off. To be clear, the roll itself wasn’t ablaze, but wrapped in tin foil, which was then set a fire for presentation purpose. Cirque Du Sushi, if you will. Thankfully, the sushi was worth having to blow out a fire for. The Surah Roll ($15.95) was a menagerie of tuna, salmon, roe and eel, which looked amazing and tasted even better.
Regular menu favorites we tried included the seafood pancake ($12.95), which was really nice once the accompanying spicy sauce took hold. The Sohgogi Soondubu Jigae, or spicy tofu stew with beef ($10.95), was tasty but we were being cautious with Asian spices and should have asked for it extra spicy. Shame on us. The assortment of sides and garnishes that came with the aforementioned dishes almost outshined them. If all we had after the appetizers and sushi were the fish cakes, kim chi and butternut squash salad, we still would have been grinning from ear to ear.
Dessert came in the form of green tea ice cream and a vanilla mochi, with the former being the most unsubtle example of green tea ice cream we have ever had. Other times we’ve had the dish, if felt more like ice cream than green tea but not here. Surah’s take on it was powerful, with the green-tea flavor asserting itself in grand fashion, almost elbowing any kind of ice-cream sweetness out of the picture. The spicy chestnut sauce went even further into complex, earthy, nutty territory. It’s definitely a unique experience. The vanilla mochi was closer to our expectations, and the two different desserts found a happy middle ground when the flavors combined.
Surah deserves a hurrah.
