Eastern Accents highlights Asian baked goods

Carol Pon Sun and Ben Sun display an assortment of their baked delights.

News photo: Linda Wan

Eastern Accents highlights Asian baked goods

By LAURA McREYNOLDS SEP 05 1996

Ann Arbor has plenty of bakeries, and plenty of Asian restaurants. Eastern Accents is the city’s very first Asian bakery, though, a combination pastry shop and cafe specializing in Chinese, Korean, Malaysian and Japanese buns, cakes and other sweets.

Eastern Accents is the brain child of Carol Pon Sun and her husband, Ben, whose family runs the Forbidden City restaurants and Champion House. After graduation with a degree in restaurant management from Ferris State, Ben Sun began experimenting with breads and pastries,first for fun, then later, with the growing idea of opening a bakery. With encouragement from Carol, Sun set off to apprentice with Chinese bakers in Boston in order to learn their trade secrets.

That, as it turned out, was no easy task. The Chinese bakers in Boston guarded their ancient baking techniques veiy closely, and they weren’t anxious to share them with a young stranger from the Midwest. Eventually, Sun found someone willing to train him to make China’s traditional baked goods, a repertoire of steamed and baked buns with both savory and sweet fillings.

The Sun’s new bakery on Fourth is compact, yet airy, with 38 seats, a small counter, several display cases full of tempting wares, and a delicate mural splashed across one wall. The cafe is very much a family affair. Ben and Carol are often both on duty, and it’s not unusual to find their delightful 2-year-old daughter, Emilie, playing happily at one of the tables. Even Carol’s mother, Dorothy Pon, has been brought on board, as an assistant baker who specializes in Western baked goods such as scones, cookies and cakes.

The Chinese buns are made from a sweet yeast batter that bakes up light and fine-grained, with an even, shiny golden top. The sugary bottom note is a little odd, at first, with meat fillings such as beef, or barbecued pork, but it has a way of growing on you after the first few bites. After eating two or three times at Eastern Accents, one of my co-workers has come to positively crave their hot dog-filled buns.

All of the meat buns are displayed and served at room temperature, which is how the Suns say the Chinese eat them, but they’re happy to heat the buns up if you’d prefer. I couldn’t quite get used to a room temperature hot dog, for example, but I liked it once I’d zapped it for a minute or so in the microwave. Both the bun and the weiner themselves had enough character

that I didn’t notice the lack of condiments.

The barbecued pork is a distinctly Asian recipe, with a sweet, soy-based sauce rather than the tomato and molasses-based Western style. It was one of my favorite meat buns, along with the curry beef, a spicy jumble of curried ground beef that also can be ordered inside a puffed pastry turnover.

A ham and cooked egg slab combination reminded me, not unpleasantly, of an Egg McMuffin; I don’t know that I’d order it again, but it had a certain bland, unthreatening appeal. The red bean bun, however, was too much of a good thing. The Chinese red bean paste filling is similar in taste and texture to marzipan, and its grainy, candied flavor was simply cloying when combined with the sweet dough.

The same batter is also used to make steamed buns, which, becauseof the moisture in the steam, turn out more like thick, chewy dumplings. The steamed buns are available with the barbecued pork filling or cubed, sauteed chicken.

Asian cakes are lighter and airier than Western tortes, decorated here with peaches, strawberries, kiwi and other fresh seasonal fruit. Other Asian desserts, such as rice flour balls rolled in coconut, are intensely sweet. The sesame ball, for instance, is a deep-fried nugget rolled in sesame seeds and filled with a candied lotus nut paste.

Western desserts include gigantic almond, chocolate chip, molasses and oatmeal raisin cookies, as well as brownies, scones, fruit turnovers and New York-style cheesecake available in plain and flavored versions.

There is also a small selection of coffee and specialty drinks, including espresso, cappuccino, latte, steamed milk with syrup and the decadent Mocha:

espresso mixed with chocolate syrup and steamed milk and topped with whipped cream.

The Suns’ sincere good-nature, is best described by a paragraph from their own menu: “... we are family owned and operated, we’ve got our heart and soul in this shop.”

It shows.

I RESTAURANT |
REVIE1

Eastern Accents

214 S. Fourth Ave. 332-8782

Food............7 out of 10

Service.........8 out of 10

Atmosphere......7 out of 10

Hours: Monday-Thursday 7 a.m.-IO p.m., Friday & Saturday 7 a.m.-ll p.m., Sunday 9 a.m.-9 p.m.

Liquor: none.

Plastic: none.

Prices: inexpensive. Wheelchair access: good.