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The New York City location of this Allston Szechuan spot is an institution, and it’s one of the few transplant restaurants in Boston we’re actually excited about. Their swinging pork belly dish has mandolined strips of meat and cucumber draped over a wooden stand, with the whole thing dangling above a bowl of garlic and chili oil. Once it arrives at your table, it’ll first get your attention for presentation, and then for being your new favorite way to eat pork belly. Order that, the pepper lover chicken that has some decent spice without setting your tongue on fire, and a couple of other plates to celebrate crushing the first half of the workweek. One of NYC’s best Chinese restaurants has opened in L.A.—or, to be more precise, Rowland Heights’ Pearl Plaza, which also houses Eat Joy Food, a 2023 Michelin Bib Gourmand.
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“Many people in the U.S. believe that Sichuan food equals red hot chiles and peppercorn. They think that they should be sweating and crying for help to extinguish the burn, but we want to show people that Sichuan food is more than that,” says Zhu.
Avi Cue Studio City
A koi pond, fake gingko trees and yellow lanterns lend an air of serenity to the dining room, in sharp contrast to the trial by fire your taste buds are likely to experience with several of Szechuan Mountain House’s signature items, which include traditional and modern Sichuanese recipes. For a walk on the mild side, opt for tamer delights like the twice-cooked pork, yibin-style ran noodles and the Insta-worthy swing pork belly. The signature dish at Szechuan Mountain House is liang yi pork belly, Zhu’s modernized take on a traditional Chinese dish. Liang yi, which translates to “hanging clothes” in Mandarin, is intended to evoke the image of laundry hung to dry on a clothesline. Together with a slice of cucumber, the thin pork belly is dipped in chile oil with a wad of minced garlic. The translucently thin slices of pork and cucumber are presented draped over a miniature wooden rack above a minced garlic and chile oil dipping sauce.
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Rice chicken also offers fried chicken sandwiches, salads, cup-bap in spicy pork, beef bulgogi and other options, and sides like corn cheese, fried sausage and tteokbokki. The ma-la dishes feature the hot-and-numbing peppercorn that’s emblematic of the cuisine. But not all of Zhu’s cooking features its spicy heat and anesthetizing effect. Sautéed vegetables and especially the dishes from the “traditional cuisine” menu, such as braised pork atop shredded, preserved vegetables, showcase the flavors of the region without chiles. While the focus remains on Sichuan cuisine, along with most of the small chain’s iconic dishes, some recipes and ingredients have been altered for the Los Angeles location to utilize more local ingredients. The signature fried rice is ramified with mustard greens, while a dish of fried lotus roots and celery provides a spectacular snap that you can hear as diners around the table attack it, with a subtle flavor that you’ll dream of that evening.
A reboot of a Chinatown spot that closed decades ago, Hwa Yuan serves great Peking duck, sesame noodles, and more in a massive space on East Broadway. Opening on an interior courtyard of a new shopping and hotel complex off Prince Street, Szechuan Mountain House was an instant hit among well-heeled dating couples out for an evening of innovative food in a romantic atmosphere. It grabbed the second-floor space formerly occupied by Grand Sichuan, itself an early advocate of the Sichuan peppercorns that have become ubiquitous in the neighborhood. “I’ve always enjoyed preparing spicy dishes to share with others since I was a child, which is why I chose to be a chef,” Zhu told The Times in an email. Bring a group to this crowd-pleasing Midtown restaurant and share a bunch of dim sum and Szechuan dishes. Szechuan Mountain House, an award-winning New York City-based restaurant group with a devoted fan base, has landed in Boston.
As the name suggests, the fiery cuisine of Sichuan — a province located in southwestern China — is the focus here. The group’s culinary director, chef Zhi Min Zhu, is overseeing the Boston menu, which includes many of the hit dishes found at the group’s other locations, including the crowd-favorite swing pork belly. The photogenic dish features thin strips of pork belly and slices of cucumber hanging on a wooden rod, suspended over a cup of minced garlic and chile oil dipping sauce.
Eschewing the bursts of red and communal tables of their predecessors, these places flaunted stylish interiors with intimate seating. Some featured rustic elements meant to evoke Chinese villages; others were more East Village-y, with exposed concrete surfaces, deejays, and futuristic light fixtures. After reopening her celebrated porridge-based restaurant last month, chef Minh Phan decided to close Porridge + Puffs after all. The Historic Filipinotown restaurant opened in 2018 but began years prior as a pop-up. Jonathan Gold called Phan’s porridge bowls colored with pickles, jammy eggs, flowers and other culinary delights “as dazzling in its complexity as anything coming out of the most famous kitchens in town.” After a pandemic-spurred closure in 2021, Phan reopened the restaurant this year.
“We are also dedicated to using free-range chicken and other seasonal ingredients and vegetables,” says Zhu. Szechuan Mountain House boasts a large fan base in New York, and its locations in Manhattan and Flushing frequently make the New York Times’s 100 Best Restaurants list and Eater NY’s list of 38 Essential Restaurants. It’s not uncommon for lines to regularly span wait times of an hour and a half or more. Manager Jerry Wang hopes that the restaurant will be just as well received in LA.
Kismet Rotisserie Studio City
In the near future she hopes to use the Porridge + Puffs space for occasional community-minded events such as cookbook dinners for guest chefs or potential collaborations with the nearby People’s Pottery Project. “I really wanted to stay true to our menu and not make any compromises just to please what we thought the local crowd would find acceptable. For us, this is what a modern-day Sichuan restaurant would actually look like in Sichuan,” says Zhu.
A stone-clad koi pond and burbling waterfall confronts you upon entering the space. Enclosed bamboo booths trail off into an interior decorated with pottery and other elements, intended to evoke the eponymous mountain retreat. But far from mounting a menu obsessed with the rural or even the urban food of Sichuan, the bill of fare is an eclectic document. In addition to Sichuan standards and Sichuan-themed inventions, it borrows dishes from other regions, leaping from Hunan to Dongbei to Beijing to Hong Kong.
Zhi Min Zhu, who hails from Sichuan, is the culinary director of all the Szechuan Mountain House locations and is in charge of training all of the kitchen teams. Zhu has been working with Szechuan Mountain House since 2015 at the New York East Village location and has helped train the team at the new Rowland Heights location. Málà Project is a great Chinese restaurant in the East Village that specializes in dry pot. Szechuan Mountain House is open for indoor dining, outdoor dining, and takeout - and they also have a location in the East Village in case that’s more convenient to you. This Chinese restaurant in the East Village specializes in soup dumplings, and it's just good enough to keep you coming back for more.
Conquer Your Sichuan Food Cravings At These 3 New York Newcomers - Hoodline
Conquer Your Sichuan Food Cravings At These 3 New York Newcomers.
Posted: Tue, 27 Mar 2018 07:00:00 GMT [source]
After establishing an ardent fan base with two locations in New York, Szechuan Mountain House has opened in Rowland Heights. Szechuan Mountain House offers popular Sichuan favorites like mapo tofu, twice-cooked pork, and kung pao shrimp, as well as classic Sichuan dishes seldom seen on menus in the U.S. Diners will be surprised by the Yibin-style ran noodles, also known as burning noodles, which are chewy, dry noodles that are flavorful, spicy, and salty from cardamine bean sprouts and roasted nut powder. The name “burning noodles” comes from the fact that traditional cooking methods add lard and chile oil to the noodles, which can be ignited without the use of water. In decades prior, people would light up the noodle as a wick for kerosene lamps.
To be the finest food city in the country and might be biased on that count but doesn’t believe she’s wrong. Aviad “Avi” Yalin’s Avi Cue pop-up, serving shawarma roasted on a spit imported from Israel, has taken over the former Tacos 1986 location in Studio City, running as a three-week pop-up with the possibility of permanent extension (follow Avi Cue on Instagram for updates). Yalin began pandemic-spurred Avi Cue roughly four years ago, consistently drawing lines of fans for fresh pita stuffed with shaved and ground wagyu. With a bricks-and-mortar location, Yalin is offering new, larger pita and additions such as fries, loaded shawarma fries and imported Israeli fruit juice. Zhu says that they take great care in the selection of peppercorns, all of which are grown in Sichuan. It is not out of the ordinary to use more than 20 different kinds of spices for a particular dish.
It first launched in the East Village in 2015 and gained attention for its experimental, eclectic approach to the cuisine in New York. Soon after, a second New York City location popped up in Flushing, and a West Coast expansion followed this past summer in Los Angeles. Luo and Wang didn’t disclose specific further expansion plans at this time, but said that they generally hope to keep expanding across the U.S. “If there is a huge demand for Szechuan food, Mountain House will try our best to be in that location,” Luo says. “It feels really satisfying to be growing the company the way we want to be growing it,” Kramer said. In addition to newly focusing on catering, Kramer and Hymanson are planning multiple other Kismet Rotisserie locations, including one slated to open in Culver City this fall.
The 3,000 square-foot, 47-seat restaurant is designed in the restaurant group’s signature upscale style, boasting classic Chinese ink paintings and calligraphy on the walls, flower art, and illuminated koi floats suspended from the ceiling. “Each Mountain House location keeps our core aesthetic,” brand operations manager Ariala Luo says. Stephanie Breijo is a reporter for the Food section and the author of its weekly news column. Previously, she served as the restaurants and bars editor for Time Out Los Angeles, and prior to that, the award-winning food editor of Richmond magazine in Richmond, Va.
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