Hunan House (湘水山莊)

I had eaten at Hunan House (湘水山莊 – xiāng shuǐ shān zhuāng, or Xiang River-the symbol for Hunan province-mountain villa) a couple of times before and somehow didn't love it. Then they were closed for a while for renovations, and recently re-opened. I had been hearing good things and decided to give it another try this evening. I'm glad I did.

Their version of the cold ox tongue and tripe appetizer fū qī fèi piàn (夫妻肺片) is quite competent. While the sauce is not as complex and interesting as Hunan Kitchen of Grand Sichuan’s, the quality of the tongue meat and tripe is much better.

The "Lamb in a Wooden Bucket" (木桶羊肉 - mù tǒng yáng ròu) turned out to be a delightful, spicy stew of lamb rib meat and rind, peppers, scallions and straw mushrooms. Beautifully rounded flavor – just delicious. I realized as I was eating this that I had never been served straw mushrooms before that weren't from a can. I had no idea that fresh ones were so lovely!

The real star of the meal for me, though, goes by the name of "Steamed Preserved Meat" (臘味三蒸 - là wèi sān zhēng) on the takeout menu. It's not even listed on their quite haphazardly-organized in-restaurant menu, and I'm certainly glad I asked about it. Ever since I ran across Fuchsia Dunlop's recipe for "Smoky Flavors Steamed Together" in her Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, I had been wanting to taste such a marvelous-sounding dish, and, as far as I can tell, none of the other Hunan restaurants around town offer it. Hunan House's version is spectacular, with Chinese bacon, preserved beef, preserved duck, thin slices of smoked bean curd, and just enough hot pepper to cut through the dense thicket of flavors. Definitely more than the sum its parts, I could eat this dish every night for the next week.

The experience produced one sour note: since this place is a bit more expensive than most of the places I write about (but still a good value), I decided to charge the meal to a credit card. (Unlike most of the places I write about, they do accept credit cards). The check folder and takeout menu both say they accept American Express, but when an American Express card was tendered, we were told they don't accept it. They either need to start accepting the damn card or stop indicating to the public that they do.

Hunan House
137-40 Northern Blvd., Flushing 11354
718-353-1808
(7 train to Main St.-Flushing, north 4 blocks to Northern Blvd., then right 3 blocks)

Fare thee well, Traditional Hunan Style (天天湘上)

Another visit to Traditional Hunan Style in Flushing this evening – it's nice to see they're becoming popular. Unfortunately, the popularity is strong among rude, drunk Chinese. More on that later.

Their spicy beef tendon (or, as it’s listed on the menu, "beef tender") appetizer is excellent (湘味辣牛筋 - xiāng wèi là niú jīn) – ribbons of very thinly-sliced tendon in a delightful, complex spicy sauce. Indeed, the flavor of this dish was more complex than anything else we tried.

The sweet but confused waitress got our order wrong and ended up bringing a dish we hadn't ordered (for which we were charged, naturally – we only realized it wasn't the one we had ordered after we had eaten half of it and the one we did want arrived). It turned out to be the best of the three main dishes we tried: 湘式熏腊雞 (xiāng shì xūn là jī – Hunan-style smoked chicken). The menu calls it "House Special Fried Chicken": small, bone-in chunks of smoked chicken, stir-fried with red and green bell peppers, dried hot pepper, ginger, scallions, and black mushrooms. Reasonably tasty, although it was much like eating a chicken version of the White Jalapeño Chinese Preserved Meat I had last time, but not as good. In fact this place seems to use the exact same complement of vegetables for all their stir-fried dishes, as far as I can tell.

The chicken dish we actually had ordered arrived several minutes later, "House Spicy Chicken Szechuan" (三椒煸雞 - sān jiāo biān jī, or three pepper fried chicken). Minus black mushrooms, this dish was almost identical to the one already on our table, except the small chunks of chicken, rather than smoked, had been deep-fried. There was no need to take a picture of it because it looked... exactly the same as the first dish.

"Zi-Ran Lamb" (孜然羊 - zī rán yáng, zī rán meaning "cumin") was a dud. Once again, it looked exactly like the other dishes, with slices of lamb instead of chicken, plus a grainy, runny sauce in the bottom of the bowl.

It appears that I had two of their very best dishes on my first visit. I wouldn't order any of the above – except the beef tendon – again.

That question, though, is moot, since I will never again be visiting this restaurant. We were seated near a large table of drunk Chinese that were openly and loudly mocking us. One certainly did not need to be able to understand whatever Chinese dialect they were shouting (it sure wasn’t the kind of Mandarin one usually hears) to grasp the intent of their glances of derision and gestures of ridicule, and the staff feigned obliviousness to it all. I have never before been made to feel so unwelcome in any restaurant in Flushing (although friends of mine have), except once, but the vibe was so bad I left before sitting down. Interestingly, it was on the same block (with the singularly inappropriate name of "Welcome Inn") – perhaps the fact that 40th Rd. is chock-a-block with happy-ending massage parlors and tour buses to and from casinos in Connecticut has something to do with it.

My admittedly drama-prone friend made a show of wiping the slime off his feet and spitting on the ground upon exiting the restaurant. In fact, not an inappropriate gesture.

Traditional Hunan Style (天天湘上)
135-23 40th Rd., Flushing 11354
718-321-2788

Traditional Hunan Style (天天湘上) (No longer recommendable)

Until the intrepid scoopG wrote about it on Chowhound, I had completely missed the existence of the recently-opened Traditional Hunan Style (天天湘上) on a crowded side street in Flushing. His review made me want to try it immediately, and now that I'm back from Texas, I finally got my chance. It is a worthy destination for lovers of spicy food.

As scoopG points out, its Chinese name 天天湘上 (tiān tiān xiāng shàng) is a play on the common phrase 天天向上 (tiān tiān xiàng shàng), or "improve every day". 天天 means "every day" or "day-to-day", but the key pivot syllable of the restaurant's name, 湘 (xiāng), is the name of the largest river in Hunan and is a sort of shorthand way of referring to the province.

Most of the dishes we ordered made me want to try most of the rest of the menu immediately. The only one I wasn't crazy about was the first of their "steamed spicy dishes" category, Steamed Spicy Shredded Pork, Squid, Chicken (水煮三絲 - shuǐ zhǔ sān sī, or "water-cooked three shreds). "Steamed" is a misnomer, here: the dish is meat and vegetables cooked in a spicy broth. The preparation is almost identical to its Sichuan couterpart (the name 水煮 (shuǐ zhǔ) is identical), minus the Sichuan peppercorns. It was good - shredded pork, chicken, and squid boiled with cabbage and bean sprouts - but it's not one of my favorite Sichuan preparations, either. I guess I had hoped it would somehow be more different.

The White Jalapeño Chinese Preserved Meat (白辣椒腊肉 - bái là jiāo là ròu) is pretty sensational. Dried, salted pork belly is sauteed with bell peppers and white, dried hot peppers, and it tastes even better than it looks.

Salt Egg with Shredded Potato (鹹蛋黄土豆絲 - xián dàn huáng tǔ dòu sī) reminded me at first of a one-dish breakfast. Potato shreds with vinegar is a dish I've enjoyed many, many times, but eschewing the vinegar in favor of salted egg yolk gives the dish a mellowness and richness that was somehow unexpected. I absolutely loved this dish.

There are several endearing mistranslations and typos on the menu... my favorite is "praised pork". I hope they never change it.

Open until midnight every day.

Click here for an update on this restaurant.

Traditional Hunan Style (天天湘上)
135-23 40th Rd., Flushing 11354
718-321-2788
(7 train to Main St.-Flushing, 1 block south on Main, then right on 40th Rd.)

Hunan Kitchen of Grand Sichuan

Edited Jan. 2018: In recent months, the quality here has slipped to the point where I feel this place is no longer recommendable.

Perhaps my overall favorite Chinese restaurant in Flushing these days is the somewhat oddly-named Hunan Kitchen of Grand Sichuan. Generally wonderful, fiery food served in extremely pleasant surroundings... what's not to love?

I'm probably going to sound like a one-man PR department for this place, but with one or two exceptions--and I've tried a couple of dozen dishes here (less than a quarter of their huge menu)--I've loved everything I've tasted. Hunan food tends to be more straightforwardly spicy than that of neighboring Sichuan, the obvious cuisine for comparison. In fact, from what I've read, the Hunanese like to make fun of the Sichuanese liberal use of numbing Sichuan peppercorns--if you're going to eat hot peppers, why pussy-foot around? I must say I see their point, although I dearly love both approaches.

If asked, the helpful wait-staff will probably steer you towards the BBQ Fish, and they are not wrong. A whole tilapia arrives in a baking dish covered with diced potatoes and yams, scallion, ginger, garlic, roasted peanuts, and, of course, toasted dried red chili peppers. It's set atop a portable gas burner so it can bubble away as you eat it, and it's terrific. They also prepare duck and pig's foot this way--I think the BBQ pig's foot is perhaps even more successful as a dish than the fish (and that's saying something!), but it makes for pretty heavy eating... I don't think I'd want it in warm weather.

Equally good is the "big fish head in huge pot". You're given a choice, but get it spicy--you're at a Hunan restaurant, for god's sake! They don't exaggerate: a large carp's head arrives in a huge pot of broth spiked with pickled hot red peppers, and it simmers atop--you guessed it--a portable gas burner (practically every table in the place has at least one gas burner on it keeping something hot). When you're ready, the waitress will come by and dump a huge plate of vegetables and mung bean sheet noodles in. Probably the best "hot pot" I've ever had. And don't be put off by the "fish head" thing--carp's heads are surprisingly meaty.

Perhaps Hunan's most famous dish, here called "braised pork, Mao's style", is excellent. It was Chairman Mao's favorite dish, and he was said to have eaten it almost every day. Chunks of pork belly simmered in a sweet, spicy brown sauce. Even better, for my money, is an item not on the menu, but you should be able to get it by asking for the "pork leg dish like Mao's pork". Chunks of pork shoulder (one waitress kept insisting it was "leg" and not shoulder, but I know pork shoulder, and this is pork shoulder) braised in a complex brown sauce, not as sweet as Mao's pork, and with just enough red pepper to make it interesting. Served in a lovely mound surrounded by baby bok choy.

It's difficult to go wrong here. I've quite enjoyed all the cold plates I've tried: liquor-soaked duck (here the character 洒 in the Chinese name of the dish is more accurate: "sprinkled"), chicken with scallion and chili oil (not spicy--almost a pesto-feel to the sauce), and ox tongue and tripe in spicy pepper sauce (the meat is okay, but the sauce is the most complex and interesting of any version of this dish I've tried). The spicy cold noodles are reminiscent of their Sichuan counterparts, although the noodles here are a bit wider, and there is the bracing addition of a good dose of vinegar. Stay away from the soup dumplings--one of the only real misfires in my exploration of the menu so far--thick, leathery wrappers and almost no soup. The dipping sauce, though, is fantastic.

Speaking of soup, the hot and sour soup here is the best version I've tried anywhere, with lots of minced pork. And the tomato egg soup is marvelous--much more complex than I expected, yet still oddly comforting.

The chicken with hot red pepper and the Dong An chicken (named for a county in Hunan) are rather similar in overall effect. If choosing, it may come down to a question of bones: the former is small chunks on the bone, the latter boneless. Dong An chicken was an especially popular choice at a recent gathering there. As was farmer-style tofu: rectangles of firm tofu stir-fried with vegetables in a pleasantly spicy sauce.

I've certainly never had anything like the sliced cured pork with dry string beans and dry turnips before. All the ingredients are diced small and dry-fried with hot peppers, of course, and plenty of ginger. It makes for an interesting, surprisingly complex, concentrated flavor. Sauteed bok choy with preserved beans is one of the more unusual vegetable options here, and quite a tasty one. The also do an excellent version of shredded potatoes with vinegar sauce.

The only other dish I've tried so far that I would advise avoiding here is the "veal chop in casserole". I didn't actually expect what I think of as a veal chop, but I didn't exactly expect ribs (cut crosswise, à la Argentine tira de asado)--from what must have been a rather elderly calf--either. The meat was chewy and uninteresting, in an uncompelling sauce. At the above-mentioned gathering, it was left practically untouched.

Hunan Kitchen also has the great advantage of staying open late. The door says until 2 a.m., but upon inquiring it seems that midnight is closer to the truth. Still, a good place to know about for late-night eaters like me.

Hunan Kitchen of Grand Sichuan
42-47 Main St., Flushing
718-666-0553
(7 train to Main St.-Flushing, then 6 blocks south on Main St.)