Tiger Fork — Restaurant in Washington

Smashed Cucumber Salad (4/5 NOMs) Sometimes eating veggies is not just good for you, but also tastes amazing, like this starter – Smashed Cucumber Salad. I won’t deny, we were a bit surprised about the size of it. Though maybe it’s normal, as this comes from the Dai Pai Dong menu section which refers to a type of open-air food stalls in Hong Kong. There are no crazy toppings or seasoning here, it’s a simple dish containing cucumbers, garlic, chili, and sesame. The combination of drinks and this salad are a great way to start a very nomnom dinner. While small, it’s great for sharing; two guests can easily share one but order a few for a larger group. I guess it’s called smashed because instead of cutting them, they smashed the cucumbers? I wonder with what and how. Maybe we should try smashing at home?

Beef Chow Fun (5/5 NOMs) Time to move onto the main course with a good Beef Chow Fun from the rice and noodles section. We are a big fan of wide rice noodles and were super excited to dig into this one. Plus, we were very hungry at this point. Beef Chow Fun is a staple of Cantonese cuisine originally from Hong Kong, and it’s so common that at this point everyone has tried their own take on it. If a restaurant can’t make this right, then you may as well leave. You can tell by our good rating that they did not disappoint at Tiger Fork. We are big fans of the thick rice noodles, bok choy, and juicy brisket that pulled this dish together. If you’re a fan of Beef Chow Fun and noodles, then this is a perfect dish for you. We enjoyed this dish so much that we left the plate sparkly clean.

Fried Rice Chicken & Chinese Sausage (4/5 NOMs) When going to a Chinese restaurant, it’s almost obligatory for you to order fried rice, and at Tiger Fork, we are starting with Fried Rice Chicken & Chinese Sausage. We are big fans of Chinese sausage, which you can buy at any H Mart or other Asian markets. Portion-wise it’s perfect, and enough to share with a large group.

Fried Rice Fish & Prawn (5 NOMs) This isn’t just any rice, it’s Fried Rice with Fish and Prawn. We actually like this one more than the Chicken & Chinese Sausage version. Portion and price-wise, both fried rice dishes are identical. You won’t go wrong with either one, but we felt that this one was better.

Humble Plate of Chili Wontons (3/5 NOMs) It’s always good to be humble, but that’s not us, so we eat humble like a plate of Humble Plate of Chili Wontons. The presentation is fun with these little bites floating in the spicy sauce. These wontons are stuffed with shrimp, chicken, and ginger. Even the spicy sauce didn’t hit that much-needed spot.

Pork Ribs (5 NOMs) A beautiful presentation and amazing taste make for our favorite dish of the night – the Pork Ribs. Not much to say here besides the fact that these ribs are amazing! Covered in soy, ginger, and Happy Lady spice which is also known as Lao Gan Ma Chili Crisp Sauce. These ribs were cooked to perfection with meat that falls off the bone. With so much sauce, it makes for one very messy dish. Good thing they give you some wipes! However, we all know that you will lick your fingers clean. It’s so good, maybe even a neighbor’s finger.

BBQ Platter (5/5 NOMs) It’s the one plate of meat to rule them all – the BBQ Platter with three different kinds of meaty goodness in one! What’s not to love with its crispy pork belly, char siu (Cantonese roasted pork), and soy chicken? Plus, served with some side sauces, veggies, and rice. Every piece of meat was so good that we just naturally enjoyed it slowly to savor every bite. Our favorite (no surprise), was the crispy pork belly. The rice was also surprisingly good, very...

This was a very disappointing experience. It should be labeled "Chinese Fusion" or "Asian Fusion" food instead of "Chinese Food".

The first clue is 谈话不做饭 written above the kitchen. 'don't cook while talking'?? It's not a phrase/saying any Chinese person would know, so why did they put it up there? Just seems to be decoration without meaning. Having Chinese elements doesn't make the dishes Chinese...

The mushroom and broccoli dumplings were good. The sauce on them was nice. The smashed cucumber salad was not smashed but cut. Clearly they want to serve 凉拌黄瓜 which is a delicious and famous dish, but you can't cut it so precisely. Also, the flavors in the sauce were completely different from the authentic recipe. Somehow it had dill in it?! It was fine, it just wasn't authentic liangbanhuanggua. Next came the chilled peanut dandan noodles. It looked like it had fried onions on it with a kind of Thai peanut sauce. That was very weird and not authentic. The peanuts could just have been whole and added to the chili sauce in dandan noodles. Instead they made it into peanut sauce and added fried onions to replace the missing crunchy peanuts. The worst part of this dandan noodles impersonation was the noodles. They were cold and rolled into a ball. It made it very difficult to separate them and get the sauce spread over them evenly. I was really upset by this. Why make it difficult to eat just for the novelty of a ball of noodles? Almost inedible.. Actually they did put white wood ear mushrooms in this which made it quite good. But please don't call it 担担面. It's not authentic at all. Then there was the eggplant mapo tofu. I never heard of eggplant being added to mapotofu. We gave it a try. Not only did they add eggplant to it, they added random little noodles to it too! Who puts noodles into mapo tofu?? The worst part though was the sauce. It was very sweet. Like ketchup with a few whole peppercorns in it, add eggplant and blend it. So it was a bit crunchy and sweet. The drinks my friends got all seemed a bit weird. One had chili oil on top and the other had a smoking cinnamon stick. Seems they like to make novel drinks. I don't think anyone particularly liked their drink. The hoisin mango mantou bun was another food our table got but I did not eat. One person said the mantou bun was the best part. It seems the mango and pork filling was very sweet. Also, it was sad to see the mantou cut open like that and served with a knife.

I really thought they butchered the Chinese food here. It's definitely fusion food.

I suspect the main target audience for this place is rich white people who don't like eating authentic Chinese food, but want novel, "exotic" "Chinese" food to take Instagram pictures of or to show off with friends. Good luck to those people, they will like...

As a born and raised Cantonese who lived in Canton for the first 23 years of my life with a born and raised Cantonese mom whose family is Cantonese for generations, I think I have the qualification to say this is not authentic Cantonese food AT ALL. You may ask, “but they say they are a Hong Kong restaurant?” So HK is geographically located within Canton, and we share the same language and culture and race/ethnicity and food since ancient times and they have been part of Canton since the ancient times except for the roughly 150 years when they were once a British colony. All that is to say, Hong Kong food is under the Cantonese food umbrella, ok? Again, we share the same food. So the standards for Cantonese cuisine also apply to a Hong Kong restaurant.

We ordered the Char Siu plate cuz it’s generally a good dish to test whether a Cantonese restaurant is authentic or not. So I’ll start with that. The result? Like seriously, are they joking? How do they have the audacity to say that is Char Siu?? They don’t know what they are doing. Period. The REAL Char Siu should be dense yet still tender, and the exterior should be honey glazed and roasted till it’s slightly crispy. Tiger Fork’s version is pieces of floppy, loose and bland meat paired with some mysterious green sauce that I’ve never seen in my entire life. It doesn’t even qualify for being “inauthentic” because it can’t even be categorized as Char Siu at all.

We also ordered eggplant mapo tofu and the green beans. First of all, mapo tufo is not Cantonese, ok? It’s a Sichuan dish. Second, we don’t put eggplants in mapo tofu, ok? Like, never. Third, the dish is ridiculously salty. Like did they put the whole container of salt in it kinda of salty. The green beans were fine, but I’ve never seen this kind of dish with green beans and peanut sauce on any Cantonese table in any Cantonese household so far in my life. So you know we don’t eat that.

On top of that, it’s way too overpriced. I went with 2 friends so we shared the 3 dishes of food. It costed me $51. I only ordered one drink. The one star goes to the drink— it was decent.

Conclusion? I would give zero star to the food. Like, the food there is not just inauthentic, it’s disrespectful to real Cantonese cuisine and to call themselves a Cantonese/Hong Kong restaurant. Real and authentic Cantonese cuisine is on whole another level. I'd recommend checking out Hong Kong Pearl at East Falls Church instead if you wanna try authentic Cantonese/ Hong Kong food. I don’t usually write reviews for restaurants on Google. But this time I feel like I have to. Cantonese people are very particular and proud of our food. I’m beyond disappointed that Tiger Fork misrepresents the Cantonese cuisine and...