Posted on Fri, May. 16, 2008
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IP RESTAURANT BOWS TO THE EAST
Tien Asian offers both food and fantasy
By MARY PEREZ
meperez@sunherald.com
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BILOXI --
In the space that used to be a movie theater, IP Casino Resort today premieres Tien Asian restaurant.Guests enter the second-floor restaurant through a fog curtain with the Tien logo projected in the haze. Waiting to serve them, four hostesses in authentic kimonos lead guests beyond the bar and lounge with its saltwater fish tanks, past the cases displaying the fresh meat and fish shipped in daily from Hawaii and Japan, alongside the display cases illuminating antique saki vessels, to the dining room with windows overlooking the bay.
Tien is the centerpiece of a $55 million expansion that includes the adjacent casino room with 600 slots, 10 table games and a video poker bar with a view, "our first foray into land-based gaming," said IP General Manager Jon Lucas. The casino opens today with a 7 p.m. ribbon-cutting and after a private party at Tien tonight, the restaurant opens to the public at 5 p.m. Saturday.
Depending on their dinner choice, guests are seated at the 20-person sushi bar with its ever-changing mood wall projecting colors, or a table in the main dining room where the yin and yang circles on the ceiling are mimicked on the floor, or one of four Shabu-Shabu and Korean barbecue tables, or the sizzling Teppanyaki tables where chefs prepare their dinner, or in the private dining room decorated with brass bamboo and a wall of floating Asian artifacts.
A communal table accommodates singles in a hurry to get back onto the casino floor. "They were everywhere in Shanghai," said Stephen Morgan, vice president of food and beverage, who traveled to Shanghai, China, with IP Executive Chef Chris Poplin and with an interpreter visited restaurants and fish markets.
"I went back to culinary school after 22 years to prepare for the opening of the restaurant," said Morgan. He and Poplin attended the Culinary Institute of America's Asian boot camp and they, along with Lucas, Director of Food and Beverage Kurt Lind and Tien Manager Nancy Nelson, went to San Francisco to sample the Asian restaurants "and brought the best here," Morgan said. Chef Terou Kinoshitu has worked all over Japan and the United States and brings 30 years of experience.
"We've been working on these menus for a long time, getting ideas and flavors," said Poplin. Six menus written in English, Chinese and Vietnamese start with an "exciting wine list," said Morgan, along with 13 specialty Asian cocktails such as mandarin Margarita and passion fruit Mai Tai. "We serve a flight of three different sakis in a taster tray," he said.
