A taste of Szechuan at Chung King, San Gabriel, CA

Several years back Joe and I went to China with our Tai Chi school. We ate ourselves silly. One of the most memorable meals was a Szechuan dinner we had in Beijing. (Yes, I know. Beijing isn't in Szechuan province, but you find just about anything in Beijing.) The food was unlike anything I had had in the States, and it left us with cravings for dishes that we did not know how to find back in Michigan. One dish in particular stayed with us: filets of fish served in a pot, covered with oil flavored with chilies and szechuan peppercorns. You lift the fish pieces out of the oily broth and then savor the tongue-numbing zing. So... earlier in November when we flew to L.A. to attend a wedding, finding an authentic Szechuan restaurant was at the top of our list (apart from the wedding, that is). We figured that LA, with its large Chinese immigrant population, would harbor at least one unaldulterated Szechuan restaurant.

Joe did some research on eGullet, and on the night we flew into LAX, before driving to our hotel, we headed out to San Gabriel to visit the Chung King Restaurant. When I called the restaurant to confirm their hours, the woman answered the phone in Mandarin Chinese and English, both greetings fired off at a rapid pace. A good sign.

There is free parking at Chung King, and if the small lot is full you can park on the nearby residential streets. We walked in the door and were immediately taken back to China. You know that saying in the States, "If you're the only non-Asians in an Asian restaurant..." It wasn't just the all-Chinese clientele, it was the smells and the dishes we saw people enjoying. It had that promising feeling.

We had to wait about 5 minutes for a table, during which I think I grinned the entire time. Then we were seated with menus, and we had to begin the difficult chore of picking sample dishes for our first and possibly only visit to this restaurant. We quickly identifed a candidate for the Szechuan fish dish we had in China. (You can view a copy of the menu at the end of this review.)

At the back of the restaurant is a large buffet of cold appetizers — something that began nearly every meal we had in China, but that we rarely see in restaurants here. The choices that night included shredded dried beef, pigs ears, sauteed peanuts with crispy little fish, a seaweed salad, green beans, marinated cucumbers, spiced cabbage, duck and a few other things. You select three items from this bounty for the cold appetizer plate (we still aren't sure whether this was included in the meal cost, but as you'll see later, that wasn't an issue). We pondered our selections, with our waitress making suggestions, and settled on the peanuts with fish, green beans, and shredded beef. Absolutely delicious!

The peanuts and fish were salty-sweet, and the fish have a definite fish flavor under a crispy sweet coating. The dried beef was cut in fairly thick chunks and was a little spicy. I particularly adored the beans in their tangy vinegar sauce, while Joe went crazy for the peanuts. (The beef was good too.) The appetizers alone were worth the trip to this restaurant.

Peanuts with fish, shredded beef, and marinated green beans

Seeing as this might be our only chance to visit Chung King, and we were a bit jet-lagged anyway, we over-ordered (the things we do for our readers!). The waitress encouraged us in this, so let that be a warning. On the plus side, most of the dishes are very inexpensive, so you won't break the bank if you go a little crazy.

The first dish we wanted to try was one with chicken and lots of chilies that we had read about on eGullet (and had had a version of in Beijing). Unable to find exactly that on the menu, we went for the "Diced chicken with chilli and peanuts" — which turned out to be their version of the standard Kung bao chicken or "gong-bao-ji-ding". This was easily the best kung bao we've had, and it was worth having something that's also available in Americanized restaurants for comparison, so it wasn't a loss by any means. (Though we still wonder where that other item was and what it would have been like; maybe it's one of the ones only in Chinese?) The chicken was lightly battered and very crisp, the flavor sweet but not overly so. No oversized hard to eat chunks with thick sauce like is found at so many Americanized Chinese restaurants. The peanuts still had their skins on, which we both liked. We did forget to specify the heat level, so we received the generic non-Chinese mild/medium-ish level of spiciness. If you like heat, don't forget to tell your waitress. On the plus side, its sweet mild heat made for a nice contrast against the much spicier boiled fish.

For a vegetable we choose the "Dry sauteed kidney bean." In one of those weird linguistic snafus, the "kidney beans" were actually green beans. They were dry stir-fried with pickled leaf and garlic and tasty ground pork. The pickled vegetables added a wonderful salty note that really lifted this dish up. I'm not terribly fond of green beans, and so I'm rather picky about how they're prepared, but this night I found two green bean dishes that had me swooning.

For something new and entirely different, we selected the "Fried Chinese bacon with garlic sprouts". The bacon is similar to American bacon (streaky bacon), and combined with the carrots and garlic sprouts to make a pleasing appearance. The bacon had a nice smoky flavor, but was my least favorite of the ones we tried. I just wasn't in the mood to eat so much fatty bacon. But if you adore bacon, or just want something out of the ordinary, this is definitely worth trying.

Finally, our main attraction, the dish that led us to seek out a Szechuan restaurant... "Boiled Fish Slices in Hot Sauce." It wasn't excatly like the version in Beijing, but it was clearly their rendition of the same dish: slices of fish in oil and broth cooked with chilies and Szechuan peppercorns. You pick the fish out of the broth (unless you enjoy eating that much oil) and savor its hot and numbing flavor. Joe was in heaven. I was in pain.

"Numbing" is actually considered a flavor in Chinese cuisine, and if you've had fresh Szechuan peppercorns you'll know exactly what this means. (If you haven't, it's hard to describe. Despite using the peppercorns in some dishes here, we didn't experience the full power they can have until we had dishes made with fresher ones in China. It was an eye-opener.) It's an amazing food experience, but it can be overwhelming, too, especially if you haven't built up a tolerance. And then there are the chilies as well... My tolerance has slipped over the years from being able to handle "extra extra hot" to a "high medium", so I savored a few pieces of hot and numbing fish and let Joe have the rest. He didn't object. But we still wound up taking a lot of leftovers back to our hotel fridge. Despite ordering enough food for 5 people, the total bill was around $35.

Chung King Restaurant
1000 S. San Gabriel Blvd
San Gabriel, CA 91776
626-286-0298
Hours: 11:00 AM — 9:30 PM

Locals take note: You can enjoy a version of the boiled fish with chilies and szechuan peppercorns in Ann Arbor at TK Wu's on Liberty. When we ordered it we told the waitress that the chefs should make it like they would for a Chinese person. I don't know if that affected the preparation or not.

Chung King Menu: click on a page to see it (there are three pages to the menu)

Comments

[Lydia]

Your post is sending me right to my Chinese cookbooks to look for some version of the fish dish. Szechuan peppercorn definitely is an acquired taste, numbing but not hot. You think you can do without it, but when you try to substitute black pepper, or hot pepper, the dish never tastes the same. Thanks for the restaurant recommendation, too.

[Kitchen Chick]

The Fuchsia Dunlap book (at right in my cookbook list) has a recipe for the boiled fish. This fish dish combines chiles plus Szechuan peppercorns, so it is both hot and numbing.

Good luck! Let me know how it turns out. It's been on my list to try making a home, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. (I have to order more Szechuan peppercorns first.)

[Tricia]

I've never heard of this dish - sounds interesting! But I wonder: just how unattractive is that homely bean curd (3rd menu page)? Pair that with the bland pork noodles, and you have a meal fit for someone with low self-esteem :^)

[s. liao]

middle kingdom has the fish dish, and it was above average.

[Kitchen Chick]

Middle Kingdom is an interesting restaurant. They have a second menu that you have to know to ask for because they generally assume that most non-Chinese will not enjoy the dishes.

[Steamy Kitchen]

I'm so craving Chinese food right now--- but sadly its almost 3am..

[Joseph]

Chung King is one of my favorite restaurants in Los Angeles, I was searching Google for their menu and came across your site.

The dish you were looking for with chicken and lots of chiles, which is truly wonderful and spicy, is the first item on the menu, Fried Chicken Cubes w/ HotPot. There really isn't a hotpot, it must be a translation snafu. But next time you're there, you'll know what to order!

[Joe, Kitchen Chick's Husband]

The dish you were looking for with chicken and lots of chiles, which is truly wonderful and spicy, is the first item on the menu, Fried Chicken Cubes w/ HotPot. There really isn't a hotpot, it must be a translation snafu. But next time you're there, you'll know what to order!

Oh, awesome! Thank you!

[Kara Leung]

My family likes going to Chung King quite a lot. I think the dish you are talking about is "Cold Chicken with Spicy Sauce"

[Joe, Kitchen Chick's husband]

Does anyone out here know if this place is still good?