specializes in congee and claypot rice — pure Cantonese comfort food. The posters on the windows detail how seriously they take their claypot craft. The rice is a mixture of old and new (seedling) Thai jasmine in order to get maximum grain separation and varying tenderness. The claypot imparts the smokiness of the hot charcoal flame into the dish without burning the rice (so the thinking goes — this might be up for debate), which itself is cooked in salted water with scallion oil. After all of that, the end result should be rice that is delicious on its own even without the soy sauce seasoning.
On my last visit, the Canto sausage claypot rice arrived 20 minutes after I ordered, as the menu says it will, crackling hot and carried in a metal sling. A second waiter appeared, removed the lid, and drizzled in the sweet soy in one swoop. The claypot hissed and steamed as the liquid soy hit the caramelized bottom of the pot.
This wasn’t my first claypot rice. I knew to wait another ten minutes, letting the residual heat make the bottom even crustier, and to throw away the broccoli, which is just window dressing. Once that hard crust was good and developed, I mixed up the sausage and crusty bits with a spoon, and I ate.
