During the run up to the fall opening of Best Quality Daughter, chef and co-owner Jennifer Hwa Dobbertin described it perfectly: “Imagine the glory dishes of The Monterey, but all the dishes are Asian.”
The Monty, for newcomers or those who missed out, was one of the most influential restaurants in the city’s recent culinary history. During its five-year run that ended in 2015, the Southtown hotspot combined ingredients in a way that felt both inspired and insane—while also utterly irresistible. Dobbertin began her culinary career there as a fry cook, under the direction of chef Quealy Watson.
Best Quality Daughter is the second restaurant from Dobbertin and Watson and just more than four months in, they have already delivered menus that have a dazzling sense of creativity with control and finesse. This balance comes out in dishes like the smashed cucumbers, which places chunks of mashed cucumber on a bed of garlicky, earthy tahini for a Sichuan-meets-Mediterranean feel. There are multiple “rolled options,” but the guilty pleasure of egg rolls filled with a mixture of crabmeat, Cajun boudin and gooey queso Oaxaca is a must. Once you’ve selected a veggie and roll, head to the menu’s “Noodles and Rice” options, where the Fat Noodle Short Rib delivers with a black bean sauce, roasted tomato, gai lan, five spice and cilantro with crispy shallots. An anything-but-typical ice cream sandwich (one fried mantou sandwich came with chocolate and salty fried peanuts) rounds out the meal. Throughout this regularly changing menu, the dishes have their roots in Dobbertin’s Chinese heritage, infused with flavors and worldwide influences of today’s San Antonio.
A San Antonio native, Dobbertin grew up in a culinary family. Her father was a chef, her mother a cook, one of her grandfathers a Chinese pastry chef and an uncle owned a Taiwanese noodle stand. She initially followed a different path, though. After attending Texas A&M University, she decided to move to Thailand in 2005 to work in the nonprofit world while pursuing her master’s in international relations. Her one-year stay turned into six. Back in San Antonio by 2011, she felt burned out on the nonprofit world. She moved into a place just south of downtown, next to The Monterey, and soon enough, she began working there in the tiny kitchen making the restaurant’s famous fries.
From there, she worked with Watson on Asian-influenced pop-ups that later turned into The Monty’s sister restaurant, Hot Joy, and she did some of her own Thai-Chinese pop-ups. The duo moved quickly: Hot Joy opened in 2013 and received raves from Bon Appétit magazine the following year. Then in 2016, the pair left Hot Joy to open Tenko Ramen in the Bottling Dept. at Pearl in 2017.
For this latest restaurant, the name came first. It’s inspired by a line in The Joy Luck Club when a character says to her daughter, “You pick worst quality crab because you have best quality heart.” Best Quality Daughter is a nod to the complex relationships between Chinese American women and their Chinese-born mothers.
With the idea in place, Dobbertin began working with Anne Ng of Bakery Lorraine and artist Jennifer Ling Datchuk on some pop-ups that quickly evolved into the restaurant. They brought Watson into the project and Dobbertin says, “It moved fast from our last two pop-ups to a brick and mortar.” Ng stepped away to focus on her bakeries while Datchuk brought her influence in the eatery’s art, including through a few of her own pieces.
For now, the biggest challenge is making sure the newest place in the former Granary at Pearl runs smoothly while keeping tabs on their nearby ramen spot. Any larger ambitions can wait. “Pre-pandemic, I was like, ‘We want to be a restaurant group,’” Dobbertin says. “Now I’m, ‘Let’s just run a restaurant.’”
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April 01, 2021 at 04:28AM
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Best Quality Daughter Celebrates Chinese Food with a San Antonio Point of View - San Antonio Magazine
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