Zoe Ma Ma

Walking into Zoe Ma Ma, I figured the food was either going to be outstandingly good, or it was going to be similar to food-court fare. I hoped for the best and braced myself for the worst.

The place is tiny inside, with seven tables, and some of those seat only two. Outdoor seating is also available in a similarly small space. The menu is about as limited as the seating, but many of the dishes can be customized by swapping the noodles or rice, or by changing the protein. Even at that, there isn't a huge selection, so you better like what’s there. There are also three specials available on specific days.

The decor is a little tired, but even that can be a good sign - if a place has been around long enough to gather some wear and tear, it must have something going for it. Some of the best restaurant meals I’ve had have been in tiny, quirky, well-worn hole-in-a-wall establishments that haven’t redecorated because they’re too busy making great food.

There's no table service, but the person at the counter immediately noticed that we were unfamiliar with the place and quickly offered to answer questions and give us suggestions. If strangers are that obvious, there must be a lot of regulars. Another good omen.

The menu made a point that everything was natural, the eggs were cage-free, and the noodles were organic and homemade. Okay, but what’s for dinner? From the descriptions, this wasn’t typical Chinese-American fare. My expectations rose.

I asked what was good, and the uber-friendly counter person said that the Za Jiang Mian ($7) was most popular and the CPR ($7) was second most popular, so we ordered those and some pot stickers, picked up a can of Dale's Pale Ale and a bottle of Tsing Tao beer and snagged a cozy table for two.

We'd barely settled our behinds into the seats when our pot stickers were ready. There were several sauces offered, including one that was labeled "hot" which is what we went for. "But it's not really that hot" we were told. The pot stickers ($1.25 each) were pretty darned good. The dough was just thick enough, and the filling was moist and flavorful with hints of garlic.

These obviously weren't store-bought dumplings, and if they were, I want to know where to buy them. In bulk. The not-so-hot hot sauce added a lot of flavor, but I'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who thought it was spicy. The sauce seemed like something that was made in-house, so that was a plus.

I had a fleeting moment when I considered ordering more pot stickers, but in no time at all - too fast, really - the rest of our meal was ready. It's always a little worrisome when food shows up that fast, because it means that it's precooked and who knows how long it's been in a steam table getting soggy and pathetic. Okay, you're not going to cook rice to order, but still, it was done amazingly fast. Too bad we weren't in a hurry to get somewhere.

The Za Jiang Mian was a noodle dish topped with ground pork in the center and julienned fresh raw carrots and cucumbers around the outside, with just a bit of cilantro for garnish. It was a pretty dish, nicely arranged and colorful in a big red bowl.

On first glance it didn't look like a lot of food, but the egg noodles buried underneath (made by hand by mama - don't forget that!) were filling, and they were cooked perfectly. If they were done ahead of time, they didn't suffer from it.

The flavor didn't quite match with the presentation, though. The cucumbers tasted like cucumbers, the carrots tasted like carrots, the ground pork was meaty, and there was a thin sauce at the bottom of the bowl. The crunch of the vegetables was nice with the meat and noodles. But the sauce didn't have a huge amount of flavor and it wasn't doing a bang-up job clinging to those noodles, anyway. The whole dish needed just a little extra something to live up to the promise of the presentation.

The CPR certainly was unusual in the sense of “what made you decide to combine these three items?” At the bottom of the bowl was a large portion of rice, undoubtedly cooked with some flavoring since it had a yellowish hue rather than being stark white. That was topped with two chicken thighs and several large hunks of potatoes. A few slices of green onion and a few leaves of cilantro served as the vegetable.

The potatoes were obviously cooked in a sauce that was seasoned with five-spice. The chicken was moist and tender, but the five-spice flavor was much less obvious. The rice was ... rice. Again, there was a thin sauce at the bottom of the bowl, but it wasn't doing much good way down there.

Ah, but we still had the plate from the pot stickers with the remaining sauce. Dipping the chicken in that added a bit more interest to what was otherwise a very basic chicken and rice dish (with potatoes for extra starch! Comfort food!) A ladle of that sauce over the whole thing might have been a better idea. Or really, just a big plate of pot stickers.

Restaurant name: Zoe Ma Ma
Food (2 out of 4)
Service (2.5 out of 4)
Ambience (1.5 out of 4)
Price ($ $$)
Address: 2010 10th Street, Boulder
Phone: 303-545-6262
Web: www.zoemama.com
Hours: Sunday – Thursday: 11 a.m. – 10 p.m.; Friday – Saturday: 11 a.m. – 11 p.m.
Credit cards accepted.
Vegetarian and gluten free dishes are available.
Noise level: As loud as your fellow diners can make it. You’ll hear them all.
Recommended dishes: Pot stickers

Originally published in the Boulder Daily Camera.