Heating it Up at Henyang Chili King

One major perk of living in the San Gabriel Valley is the sheer availability of Chinese restaurants representing various regional Chinese cooking. I've eaten my way through Shanghainese, Sczechwan, Cantonese, Yunnan foods and more. For one particular outing, I took my dining group to Henyang Chili King to check out Hunan Cuisine. My last experience with Hunan food was at Hunan Seafood Restaurant in Rosemead, which definitely had its hits and misses, so I was looking forward to what this other restaurant would bring to the table. Literally! To learn more about Hunan Cuisine in general, click here and click here for more info.

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I first found out about Henyang Chili King from a Jonathan Gold article, so I based our menu around the dishes he highlighted. Since then, I also came upon a blog posting by Sinsoul and wished that I was able to incorporate some of his mentions as well, but that'll just have to be for a return visit. Anyway, to start our meal, we were served a complementary appetizer of boiled peanuts and pickled veggies. It was nice to start off with something with more neutral flavors, especially since Hunan cuisine is known for its bold flavors.

My group shared a total of 11 dishes that evening, but considering that there's over 170 dishes to choose from on the menu, we only had a small fraction of what was offered. The first plate to land on our table was the cauliflower cooked in “pork oil” and crunchy lardons, which are basically cubed pork. Cauliflower is a bland vegetable on its own, but in this dish, it absorbed a lot of porky goodness from the oil and was simply irresistible.

Following the Cauliflower came the Cumin Lamb. The meat was tender and the flavors of the cumin, the garlic and the cilantro came together and danced on your taste buds.

Arriving with the Cumin Lamb was the Bangly with Chicken dish. Bangly refers to chestnuts. This particular item had a brown sauce that had a hint of sweetness to it and went perfectly with the slight, starchy sweetness of the chestnuts. Also, if you have one or two people who can't handle spicy food, this is a good option to order for them.

Unfortunately, the Shredded Squid with Bamboo Shoots was disappointing. First, the dish name was off since the squid wasn't actually shredded and were more akin to chopped tentacles that seemed more octopus than squid-like. Also, those tentacles were very, very chewy. I don't mind mind a chewy texture, but that was just too much. Another thing to note was that while the bamboo shoots did make an experience, I think celery really was more present than the latter and in the end, the flavors were just really bland.

Flavor wasn't a problem with the Spicy Whole Fish that we had ordered. In fact, the sauce that was poured over the fish did have a fiery kick to it, which was balanced with a little sweetness and tasted quite nicely poured over some of my steamed rice. The only issue I had was the fish itself. It was really bony and was more bone than actual meat. Interestingly enough, this was the same problem I experienced at the last Hunan meal I had at Hunan Seafood Restaurant.

The Dried Cucumber tossed with shredded fresh shiso was solid and I appreciated the fact that cucumber itself weren't overcooked and still had a slight crunchy texture.

Both the Hot and Spicy Tofu and House Special Spicy Over Spicy dishes supplied a nice hit of heat to our palates, but I do have a question to those of you who have been to Henyang Chili King before. Do any of you actually know what type of meat was used in the House Special Spicy over Spicy dish? Although we ordered and enjoyed eating it, we weren't quite sure what we were eating at time. We tried asking our waitress, but her English was limited and she couldn't tell us. Ground pork and cubed pork was my best guess.

I was one of the few of my dining partners who enjoyed the Bitter Melon sauteed with Chinese sausage, but that can be attributed to my growing up eating this particular vegetable. However, I should mention that I would have liked the bitter melon to be a bit more bitter than it actually was, but if it was, that may have been an issue with the rest of the group.

The Sauteed Preserved Meat dish was okay. Not a fav, but not bad either. My only issue was that the preserved meat, which was pork, was a little too salty for me personally, but eating it with rice helped cut down that saltiness a bit.

Our final dish of the night was Stewed Wild Pumpkin. Although this dish was called Wild Pumpkin, I think it's actually more of a butternut squash. I liked the sweetness of the squash, but the entire dish was over cooked to the point of mushiness. Mushy is just not that appealing.

Overall, I enjoyed my meal at Henyang Chili King and for me, it's a much better Hunan restaurant option than the last one I went to. I would definitely make a return visit and considering that there are over 150 items still left on the menu to try, at least, I know there'll always be variety with every meal.

Henyang Chili King
138 E. Garvey Avenue, #C
Monterey Park, CA 91755
(626) 573-9258




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Sizzle and Fizzle at Hunan Seafood Restaurant

A couple of years ago I had my first experience with Hunan cuisine at Hunan's Restaurant in Alhambra. Overall, it was a tasty foray into this new food and I was looking forward to trying more. Unfortunately, several months later, it burned down, but like a phoenix rising out of the ashes, Hunan's Restaurant re-invented itself as Hunan's Seafood Restaurant and moved from Alhambra to Rosemead.

For my dining group's second return, we opted to share 8 dishes. Of the 8, only one really knocked my socks off, one in a "Damn, this is so hot, my lips are burning" kind of way, but also in a "Damn, this is hot, but it's so good, I can't stop eating it" way. So what's the name of that dish? It's the House Special Lamb Rib with Spicy Sauce. All you have to do is look at it to see why it's so incendiary.

First, the lamb ribs are completely covered with a mound of red peppers and than there are the seeds and I'm talking chili seeds plus the peppercorns. Yikes! At first, I thought everything was for show, but one bite of my lamb rib and I knew that this was one show that wasn't going to have a closing night. It was such a hit at our table, we actually placed another order for it. Suffice to say, we were gluttons for punishment.

As for the other menu items, there was a running theme among some of them that bothered me a lot. For example, the Clams with Black Bean Hot Sauce was the first to land on our table. The slight saltiness of the black bean sauce along with its heat went well with the clams, at least when there were clams. I'd say 1/3, if not more of the shells were empty of clam meat. The House Special Chicken with Hot Sauce paired well with the earthy mushrooms that came with this dish, but the chicken itself was quite bony. Forget "Where's the Beef?" It was more about "Where's the Chicken?"

The Steamed Hunan-Style Fresh Fish that I absolutely was gaga over at Hunan's Restaurant stilled packed lots of flavor punch, but was about half the size of what I had before and like the chicken, the fish was too bony and didn't have enough meat to it. Even as we were digging into the lamb ribs, I almost like using a shovel so that we could find that meaty goodness underneath all the peppers. It wasn't as if I was expecting a lion's portion of food, but how can bony chicken and fish and half-empty clams be acceptable by any restaurant standard unless you're a restaurant that cares more for the bottom line than feeding your customers and making them happy.

As for the rest of our menu for the evening, the Stir-Fried String Bean and Ground Pork was nothing spectacular, but at least, the restaurant was generous with the beans. I found the Steamed Hunan Ham we ordered to be a little too salty for my palate, which is a problem I had with in the past with other dishes that I tried at Hunan's Restaurant. The Boiled Fish with Hot Sauce was a bit of a mystery. It looked like a soup intially, but the "sauce" was actually very oily. Some of the group just ate a little bit of the fish and left it at that. I actually poured that sauce over my white rice and ate the fish with it. The rice became a little greasy; yet, it worked for me.

For the most part, I enjoyed the flavors of the food. Those lamb ribs were spectacular, but for a restaurant to be so spare and scant in the meat portions of some of their dishes, it doesn't serve themselves well and literally, doesn't serve their customers well either. Maybe, I'll make my way back to Hunan Seafood again, but for now, there are still so many other restaurants to check out that it'll probably take another year or two before I do a return visit.

To see pics, go to:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/la_addict/sets/72157605008831699/

Hunan Seafood
8772 E. Valley Blvd.
Rosemead, CA 91772
(626) 289-8389

Hunan's Restaurant in Alhambra - CLOSED

Last night, my dining group made a foray into Alhambra to try out the Hunan cuisine at Hunan's restaurant. We ordered a total of 9 different dishes and we definitely chowed down. For the most part, I'd say that the dishes were hit and miss. Either I really liked a particular dish a lot or there would be something I probably would never order again.

The three standouts for me included the following:

* Toss-Fried Mutton with Cilantro - The mutton was tender and upon taking the first bite, the dish didn't seem that spicy, but then it does give you a zing on your palate after swallowing. I also liked the grassiness of the cilantro.

* Toss-Fried Chicken with Hot Sauce - Everything just came together, the heat, the texture, the flavor!

* Steamed Hunan Style Spicy Fresh Fish (Whole) - This fish was awesome. The meat was moist and delicate plus the sauce really complemented the fish meat as opposed to overwhelming it.

The two dishes I would skip over are:

* Three Flavored Dumplings - Not much flavor here. In fact, these dumplings were beyond bland.

* Eggplant & Ground Pork with Pickled Vegetables - Normally, I love eggplant, but this dish was way too salty for my taste.

Overall, I would make my way back to Hunan's Restaurant again. There were a lot of items on the menu I wasn't able to try this time, but would like to another time and hopefully, I'll have even more hits than last night.

To see pics, go to:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/la_addict/sets/72157594325669815/

Hunan's Restaurant
903 W. Valley Blvd.
Alhambra, CA, 91803
626-289-0789