Eating for the Adrenaline Rush at Hengyang and Hunan Chilli Kings, plus Yunnan Garden

More Hunan than Yunnan

Comments (0) By Jonathan Gold Wednesday, Feb 11 2009

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The cooking still leans toward Sichuan classics, including a killer cold case of chile-laced tripe, pork stomach, beef shank, tofu, yam jello, you name it — Yunnan is more or less in the neighborhood. The warm sliced fatty pork with garlic is very good. But where you used to have to guess your way around the menu, a new, clearly labeled photo insert now makes it easy to order the restaurant’s specialties, not just the water-boiled fish, fried chicken and dan dan mian, but famous Yunnan dishes like the intensely herbal chicken soup gently cooked in a clay Yunnan steam pot, and a Yunnan dried-beef dish I’d never seen before, meat sliced paper thin and fried with big handfuls of fragrant dried chiles — it tastes like a Yunnan version of northern Italian bresaola. The dish you will see on every table is crossing-the-bridge noodles, a mild broth kept mysteriously hot under a sheen of oil, into which the waitress pushes vegetables, sliced raw poultry and rice noodles, which cook within seconds. Unfortunately, as at its sister restaurant and as in the refrigerator of your cheapest friend, the alcohol selection is limited to cold cans of Bud.

Hengyang Chilli King and Hunan CHilli King: Hengyang open daily, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Hunan open 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Beer at Hengyang. Takeout. MC, V at Hengyang; cash only at Hunan. Recommended dishes: sautéed preserved meat with garlic leaf; sautéed cauliflower with pork oil; house special steamed fish; bangly (chestnut) with chicken; dried cucumber with purple perilla.

Anne Fishbein

The chile-and-garlic mosaic, in this version, stir-fried with smoky bacon at Hengyang Chilli King

Location Info

Map

Yunnan Garden

545 W. Las Tunas
San Gabriel, CA 91775

Category: Restaurant > Asian

Region: Monterey Park/ Alhambra/ S. Gabriel

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(Hengyang) 138 E. Garvey Ave., Monterey Park, (626) 573-9258.
(Hunan) 534 E. Valley Blvd., San Gabriel, (626) 288-7993.

Yunnan Garden: Open daily, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Budweiser only. Lot parking. MC, V. Recommended dishes: crossing-the-bridge noodles; Yunnan dried beef; boiled fat pork in garlic sauce; cold appetizers.

545 W. Las Tunas Ave., San Gabriel, (626) 308-1896.