Nice to look at but nothing special on the plate, this private-equity-conceived restaurant in Tempe feels like a
Modern Asian money grab.
by Nikki Buchanan | Photography by Jill McNamara
Three Thirty Three, a Modern Asian restaurant at Watermark Plaza near Tempe Town Lake, inspires the kind of slack-jawed awe you see on the faces of Las Vegas tourists – both for the spectacular décor and spectacularly overpriced food.
This over-the-top endeavor, which took private equity firm ITR Investment Group $10 million and two years to build, is admittedly something to behold. The 360-degree eye candy includes an ornate, wall-mounted dragon sculpture, a string of faux cherry blossom trees situated throughout the restaurant and a massive LED screen – the largest in any U.S. restaurant, ownership says – offering a steady stream of colorful 3D animation, including schools of swimming ocean fish, cherry blossoms drifting from trees and hot air balloons rising to the sky. Named after the “angel number” of New Age mysticism, the place is a mind-blowing feast for the senses, complete with a soulful R&B playlist and, later in the evenings, a DJ spinning electronic dance music. Loud, yes. But I love it.
If only I were half as enchanted with the food. Barring a few notable exceptions, nothing I ate lives up to the PR hype or warrants the nose-bleed prices. Accentuating the positive, a bottle of Louis Latour white Burgundy is given the usual markup (i.e. not a hefty one), and firm, briny Shigoku oysters are imaginatively paired with peppery yuzu kosho mignonette and spicy kimchi sambal, the latter a sexy Asian riff on cocktail sauce. But $48 for six oysters? Yikes! The first sticker shock of the evening.
Whipped edamame, sprinkled with onion ash and set in a moat of house-made chili sauce, is one of the restaurant’s signature dishes, and for good reason. We scoop up every creamy bite with airy, togarashi-dusted prawn chips and beg our friendly server for more chips. It’s the best thing we eat all night – and the cheapest.
Crazy Rich Asian fries – sprinkled with nori, wasabi sea salt, Pecorino and truffle oil, and sided with truffle aioli and zippy Korean ketchup – aren’t the $18 “bargain” we expected. The pale, skinny fries look sourced from a freezer bag, and the taste of truffles is nearly nonexistent. I can get better fries for considerably less at Confluence and Zinc Bistro.
A wreath of smoked bluefin tuna crudo – set in house yuzu ponzu and strewn with cucumber cubes, yuzu pearls (their citrusy juices bursting in the mouth), scallion foam, microgreens and edible flowers – is lovely, with rich, smoky flavors brightened by cucumber and citrus. But $52 worth of lovely?
Despite the sexy ingredients (shiso, yuzu pearls, blood orange and cherry petal), hamachi shiso aguachile seems excessively and inexplicably sour, while tom kha prawns, sweetened with coconut milk and mildly spiced with chili oil, are tasty but not compelling enough to order again.
Coal-roasted lemongrass chicken, coated in an unidentifiable sauce, lacks crispness and doesn’t taste much like lemongrass. What a pity! I generally love this combo. And like so many other dishes here, Wagyu fried rice, chunky with nubbins of juicy Wagyu filet mignon, is less than the sum of its parts, a good dish that ought to be better, given its ingredients.
Lobster udon carbonara, served lukewarm, is the coup de grâce. Although the sweet, butter-poached lobster is excellent, the udon noodles, sprinkled with Pecorino Romano and truffle shaves (available as an add-on) come scantily coated in a sauce devoid of the silky luxuriousness the dish is known for. Worth $108? Not even close. Shimogamo makes a dreamy udon carbonara (admittedly, it isn’t classically prepared, and it doesn’t contain lobster, but it tastes better) for the price of a burger.
On the flip side, a ganache-coated, gold leaf-flecked chocolate-toffee bar, served in a puddle of dark chocolate with a scoop of locally sourced ice cream, ends the night on a high note. That said, I’m not exactly walking away on a cloud.
But you know what chaps my hide more than the hype and high prices? The hubris of uninformed California transplants who make a big show of casting light upon our poor, unsophisticated dining scene. In a recent interview with The Arizona Republic, an ITR vice president attempted to justify Three Thirty Three’s ultra-rarefied business model by citing the popularity of Nobu and Mastro’s Steakhouse, of all places. Forgive me for laughing, but the benchmark for luxurious fine dining in Phoenix is Christopher’s at Wrigley Mansion, or perhaps ShinBay – not an out-of-town sushi chain or a 26-year-old corporate steakhouse. Elevated Asian is not new to us, either. Our own James Beard Award-winning Nobuo Fukuda has been dishing out dazzling Japanese fusion for more than 20 years. You’d think someone would better educate themselves about our restaurant market before blundering into it.
Out of fairness, I’m compelled to ask myself if I might have been wowed by the Wagyu tomahawk steak, which was impressionistically priced at $600 on the original menu but later marked down to $480. Seeing that I’m not a Vegas-style high roller or a gambler, probably not.
Although I love the trippy digs, I’m not ready to pay astronomical prices for fair-to-middling food that brings nothing new to the Modern Asian table.
Three Thirty Three
Cuisine: Modern Asian
Contact: 430 N. Scottsdale Rd., Tempe, 480-590-7215, threethirtythreerestaurants.com
Hours: Su-Th 5-10 p.m., F-Sa 5-11 p.m.
Highlights: Seasonal oysters (half dozen, $48); whipped edamame ($18); smoked bluefin tuna crudo ($52); chocolate bar ($20)
