Chef Phillip Tang at East by Northeast, his 'modern Chinese' restaurant in Cambridge, MA. Photo by Alison Cook

Let me tell you about the kind of restaurant I long for us to have in Houston.

During a trip to Boston last fall, my head was turned by a little place called East by Northeast. The young chef-owner there, Phillip Tang, bills his menu as "modern Chinese." It's a Cambridge slot-in-the wall that seats maybe 30 people, if you count the handful of seats at the bar, which looks into the small kitchen.

There Tang & company weave New England produce, meats and seafood into a short roster of house-made noodle dishes and bright sharp small plates that range from salads to congees to pancakes and dumplings.

The ingredients vary with the seasons. The prices are modest. The wine list is short and smart. The flavors grabbed me by the lapels and didn't let go.

Tang, who's got classic French training and experience in a wide range of restaurants, happens to be a master at handling acid, so his noodles and tofu dishes come alive with currents of black vinegar or pops of unusual house-pickled vegetables.

Local rutabaga or parsnip might step in for the more traditional daikon. Juicy pork meatballs in a bowl of thick wheat noodles might be leavened with salt cod, with cubes of butternut squash tossed in for an effect that seems both familiar yet new.

Housemade wheat noodles with pork-and-salt-cod meatballs at East by Northeast in Cambridge, MA. Photo by Alison Cook

I've never had anything quite like Tang's short-cut rice noodles, which come off more like a species of squat, smooth-textured rice cake once they're pan-seared so that their edges crisp up--the better to play off an aromatically spiced oxtail braise with autumn root vegetables. And I'll never stop thinking about Tang's Silken Tofu dish with glazed butternut squash and hon shimeji mushrooms. Its black-vinegar edge and its deeply savory flourish of crisped garlic bits made it memorable.

The small dining room at East by Northeast. Photo by Alison Cook

Tang's food seems utterly personal and very much of its place. It is connected to the tastes and textures of his childhood (his parents ran a Chinese restaurant in McLean, VA), yet not circumscribed by them. He feels free to borrow Japanese elements or to cut loose with a smoked bluefish salad strewn with wisps of freshly grated horseradish and rimmed with a gloss of sesame-mustard dressing.

Why don't we have a restaurant like North by Northeast in Houston? I've been wondering about that vexing question ever since. Despite the dizzying riches of our Chinatown restaurants, our vibrant and sizable Asian communities that spread through the far-flung suburbs, and an audience of local eaters that increasingly dotes on these lively cuisines, we have yet to spawn our David Chang (of Momofuku fame) or our Charles Phan (the chef who brought high-profile contemporary Vietnamese to San Francisco).

All of the elements are in place for such a restaurant in Houston, right down to the growing pool of talented young Asian chefs and a network of Gulf seafood, local meat and vegetable suppliers that just keeps getting stronger. I'm pretty sure the audience is here, too.

Chef Justin Yu expedites an order at the Moneycat brunch fundraiser for Okra. Photo by Alison Cook

I'm guessing that by the strength of the turnouts for chef Justin Yu's series of Moneycat brunches this past fall. Held at Umai on Bellaire Boulevard, his father's Japanese restaurant (and named for the lucky ceramic cats seen on many an Asian restaurant counter), the brunches featured exactly the kind of thoughtful, local-ingredient-driven Chinese dishes that so excited me at East by Northeast.

The brunch series is over now, as Yu prepares to open his restaurant, Oxheart, in the former Latin Bites space this spring. But last Sunday, he and an all-star kitchen line of fellow chefs staged a last-hurrah Moneycat brunch at Paulie's restaurant as a fundraiser for OKRA, the new collective that aims to make the interests of independent restaurants heard in the political realm.

Moneycat's pan-fried rice cake with fried rapini, chili miso sauce & aromatic herbs. Photo by Alison Cook

The place was jammed from 9 a.m. onwards, and the food was magnificent. Humble pan-fried rice cakes turned gloriously fragrant under a tumble of the winter herbs that grow so well in our subtropical climate, along with emerald lengths of pan-fried rapini, toasty peanuts and nori, the fragile Japanese seaweed. Dill and lemon basil in a newfangled Chinese dish? Believe it.

Fried Gulf whiting with miso garlic butter and fish-guts fried rice. Photo by Alison Cook

From Jim Gossen and P. J. Stoops at Louisiana Foods' bycatch market, Yu procured Gulf whiting that he and his team fried whole, in a filmy batter, just to the point that the flesh turned pearly. The fish had a lovely mineral note and came with miso-sparked garlic butter, as well as a bed of fried rice flavored with the fish guts.

Yeah, you heard me. Fish innards. They are actually good stuff, with a gentle oceanic funk, and the results were like some Dirty Rice of the Sea.

Sound too adventurous? Not every dish was a challenging as the Lightly Boiled Balut, an egg containing a partially developed duck embryo that wasn't as scary as I feared it might be. The liquid inside the shell turned to a gentle savory broth, and the livery-tasting meat combined with the rich yolk rather nicely. There was a wedge of lime and a little heap of salt to cushion the experience, plus a baby bottle of Little Slammer ale, but I found I didn't need the security blankets.

Congee with pan-fried Spam, cashews & bonito flakes at Moneycat. Photo by Alison Cook

More sedate thrills came in the form of beautifully seared skirt steak with a fish-sauce aioli, squiggles of chili-shrimp sauce and a shower of hot chiles and fried garlic. That dish could almost supplant fajitas in my affections.

The breakfast classic of fried eggs and potatoes showed up with the potatoes puffed to a deep-bronze crisp and flavored with a pepper sauce that vibrated with a mysterious note of the sea. I could eat them every day of my life.

I actually found myself eating Spam and liking it: pan-fried and salty and stashed at the heart of a bowlful of congee, the comforting rice porridge that's a Chinese breakfast staple. Yu's version bristled with cashews green onions and boiled egg, with a field of transparent pink bonito (fish) flakes on top that waved in the air currents rising from the porridge, as if they were alive. It was eerie, and very good.

The Moneycat. Photo by Alison Cook

One of my favorite flavor bombs of the day was the deeply herbal broth for a dish of "pig parts" (gelatinous pig's foot, primarily) stewed with galangal root, Chinese celery and culantro, the broad-leafed cousin of cilantro. I believe that resonant broth could cure many ills.

So could the lively assortment of wines picked out by Justin Vann, who'll be handling the sommelier duties at Yu's new Oxheart; and the cardamom scones with kaffir lime curd by Yu's talented wife, Karen Man, who also baked buttered black-pepper biscuits served with an orange dab of uni on top. There were serious coffee drinks by David Buehrer and Ecky Prabanto of Greenway Coffee and Tea, frequent collaborators of Yu's.

Just as at East by Northeast, the Moneycat prices seemed democratically low considering the quality of the ingredients and the eating experience. I left wishing fervently that Yu would find a way to continue cooking in this style, even though it is hardly the sort of thing he plans to do at Oxheart when it opens this spring.

There, he will do the kind of rarefied tasting menus you might find at some of the world's top modern restaurants: Noma, In de Wulf (where Yu and Man staged last year), Relae (the Copenhagen restaurant that is the couple's chief inspiration for Oxheart). The Moneycat brunches, he told me, are more what he'd serve as a staff meal for his employees.

I can hardly begrudge Yu his ambition. I wish there were more of it in the Houston restaurant world.

Still, I can't help wishing he'd reserve Sundays for the Moneycat-style modern Chinese dishes he does so well. That way the next generation of Houston chefs and restaurant owners would have a role model that could move the city's restaurant scene forward. And I could have my pan-fried rice cake and eat it, too.