Looks Are Bitterly Deceiving at Nonya
By Eli Penberthy
Food Critic

As a form of art, the cooking and presenting of food is sorely under-appreciated. While people are quick to praise poets or singers or painters, they rarely commend the artistic geniuses of chefs. Perhaps it is because eating is such a basic instinct that to call it art seems somehow to collapse the obvious difference between pleasure and necessity: we must cook and eat to live, but we can sculpt clay simply because we want to. But if art is anything we create, then food, for those who live to eat, is perhaps the most credible of art forms.

I was stewing over this ambiguous connection between food and art as I walked into Nonya, the fusion restaurant in Pasadena that blends Malaysian and Chinese cuisine. The restaurant is beautifully designed, with a sleek mahogany bar, bamboo-covered walls, trickling water fountains, and deep earth-toned furniture. If we could say that food is art simply because it is served in an attractive space, then Nonya's food would be prize-winning.

Unfortunately, there is more to good food than the atmosphere in which it is served, and even the eye-catching presentation of the food itself at Nonya is not enough to qualify it as artful.

My friend and I shared the tofu salad as an appetizer, a gorgeous pile of perfect, white cubes of tofu and crispy noodles, covered with vegetable chutney and a light broth. We delved into it full of good expectations, but our excitement ceased after the first bite.

Although it tasted clean and fresh, it was miserably bland because the tofu had not soaked up any of the broth. It wouldn't have mattered anyway, we found out, for the broth was equally as tasteless. We wished we had a few wedges of lime to squeeze over it ourselves-or even a little salt and pepper-because as it was, it was so flavorless it was almost inedible.

We hoped our entrée would redeem the meal: a large plate of transparent vermicelli noodles stir-fried with vegetables. It, too, looked seductive, but we soon found out that it was even blander than our appetizer. There were only two vegetables, limp cabbage and stringy carrots, and the noodles were clumped together from too much oil. There was not even a hint of spice-we wished that this had also been doused with lime.

Our friends were similarly disappointed with what they ordered. One ordered the special, shredded beef glazed in sweet chilies and ginger and covered with sesame seeds. Even the chilies didn't liven up this dish, which was plain with the exception of sporadic, sharp twinges of ginger. Had the flavor been more consistent, this dish might have been successful. Another friend ordered a dish of rice stick noodles, beef, and shrimp sautéed in sambal sauce. As beautiful as the other items, it was also equally tasteless, and much too oily.

The only truly enjoyable dish we ordered was a simple plate of steamed broccoli, green beans, potatoes, and egg with a small bowl of peanut sauce in the center for dipping. The peanut sauce snapped with ginger but like everything else, could have used the sourness of lime to freshen the creamy texture.

We mopped up tasteless pieces of the other dishes with the peanut sauce: the tofu in the salad, the not-so-sticky rice that came with the entrees, and even some of the stray vegetables from the vermicelli noodles. Essentially, we were forced to make our food into tasteful art when alone, it was just a series of plain, unexciting ingredients.

The Nonya dining experience proved to be unsatisfactory not only because of the food, but also because the service was painfully slow. Our meal lasted for two hours, and you can imagine that we were not doting over our food for that long.

The biggest disappointment, perhaps, was Nonya's failure to live up to its artistic potential. They have a great location, just a block off of popular Colorado Boulevard, and food that is even more visually pleasing than the beautiful interior and design of the restaurant itself.

I still firmly believe that food is a wonderful form of art, and though the chefs at Nonya are not yet respectable artists, they easily could be, if they would open their drawer of spices and play with them a little.

The defining of food as art, after all, does not rest on who serves it, or where it's served, or even how it looks when presented. We define food as art simply because it tastes good.