Ginger Blossom
1203 Parker St., Springfield, 413-783-8300
Mon.-Thu. 11 a.m.-10:15 p.m.
Fri.-Sat. 11 a.m.-11:15 p.m., Sun. 12 p.m.-10 p.m.
Entrées: $6.50 to $26.95
You can literally order a boatload of Japanese food at Ginger Blossom. And there are myriad types of Chinese food and other offerings at the new Asian place next to a Dollar Store in Sixteen Acres near Western New England College.
Ginger Blossom is getting a reputation in the area because it goes way beyond the strip mall places with scratched plexiglass at the takeout window or the local eatery that’s been serving the same fried rice, dumplings, sesame noodles and Kung Pao for years.
Take the aforementioned boat, for example. For $42 the sushi chef styles a small wooden boat with 12 pieces of sushi, 16 pieces of sashimi, a California roll and the chef’s special roll. Although California rolls, the baked potato of Japanese food, are typically a heartless collection of avocado, rice, some fake crab and cucumber, this chef’s version wraps the rice, crab and cucumber in an impossibly thin leaf of avocado to create something that looks like a Balinese offering. A couple at the sushi bar shared a big scorpion bowl of booze with their boat and admired their chef’s work.
At Ginger Blossom, they are providing an ark of flavor that includes everything Asian under the sun—Hunan (tangerine chicken beef), Cantonese (sizzling scallops and beef), Shanghai (Neptune’s Blessing), Taiwanese (black pepper steak) Thai (Pad Thai) and “House” (house special tofu and house duck). On the Japanese side, rolls (maki) are on the menu as well as sushi, sashimi, gyoza, tempura, teriyaki, negimaki, udon (noodles) and seaweed salad.
For appetizers, we tried the cold noodle with sesame sauce, a bellwether of any Chinese place because if they cheat, they’re using peanut butter rather than sesame paste for the sauce. In this case the dish was somewhat like a fluffernutter without the fluff or the bread but with decent noodles—not bad because they were extremely spicy. On the other hand, the seaweed salad was thin strips of several types of seaweed in a film of vinegar. peppered with sesame seeds. It was delicious and as good as, or better than, at most Japanese restaurants. Next was the Szechuan dumpling in spicy sesame sauce with crisp dough encasing little bits of pork and onion. It was an excellent dumpling that held up nicely with the sauce. A scallion pancake came with a total of three large pancakes cut into triangles with a dark dipping sauce.
Main courses included a 10-ingredient lo mein, 10-ingredient fried rice and the 10-ingredient pan-fried noodle. If you’ve ever had pan-fried noodle, you’ll appreciate that this version includes chicken, beef, shrimp, scallops and vegetables. The noodles are cooked and then fried before being served over the other ingredients.
On the Japanese menu, we tried one of the house special rolls, the Dancing Eel. This one came with toasted eel, avocado, cucumber, cream cheese, mayonnaise and caviar (the mayonnaise, fortunately, was undetectable). Other house special rolls were the Golf Club roll (toasted eel, asparagus and avocado) and the Valentine roll (spicy tuna inside, tuna on top) which might make a good gift for the holiday next week.•
