Healthy eating and Chinese food are often hard to combine, but Karen Chen has discovered the recipe. After the success of Jianguo 328 (a homestyle Shanghainese restaurant that forgoes MSG and uses filtered water to boil its excellent noodles), the Taiwanese restaurateur decided to look west – where spice is king – for her next venture: Yi Zhang Hong.
The friendly Sichuan restaurant is cobbled together with a narrow staircase leading up to cheerful dining rooms over three floors. On each level, bright folk art hangs on white walls above long banquettes and blond wood tables, and the red-tiled bar on the first floor is decorated with bottles of imported wine and beer and canisters of local tea.
Start with the snack menu here – these have some of Sichuan’s most famous culinary exports, all for less than RMB 12 (US$1.80) each. Fist-sized bowls of chili oil wontons (红油抄手, hóng yóu chāoshǒu) are wrapped in wheat skins so thin, the pink of the five-spice-laced pork shines through. A scarlet pond of fiery chili soup flecked with fresh green onion laps at the edges of the floating bite-sized dumplings.
The region’s famous spicy wheat noodles (担担面, dàndàn miàn) are looped lazily into a pool of spicy soup thickened with peanut sauce and crowned with a dollop of fatty minced pork. Broaden your culinary horizons by ordering the fern root noodles (拌厥根粉, bàn jué gēn fěn). Served cold, these noodles are made of bracken starch, which gives them a chewy, moreish texture and an inky russet hue that calls to mind freshwater eels. The same spicy soup that surrounds the dandan mian is here too, but instead of peanut sauce, there’s a healthy dose of black rice vinegar and sliced fresh red chilies to give it that Chinese hot-and-sour flavor.
Visitors will spot some familiar Sichuan favorites, like twice-cooked pork (回锅, huíguōròu) and kung pao shrimp (宫保虾仁, gōng bǎo xiārén), but this menu – which is short in comparison to those of most Sichuan restaurants – caters to locals. (You can tell by the high ratio of offal to meat dishes.)
The popular crispy pork intestines (脆皮肥肠, cuì pí féicháng) are prepared like Sichuan spicy chicken (辣子鸡, làzǐ jī): fried to a crisp and covered in chilies. Like Jianguo 328, Yi Zhang Hong uses less oil than most Sichuan recipes stipulate, but that doesn’t stop them from deep-frying. Sizzling pork liver (爆炒猪肝, bàochǎo zhūgān) is cooked in the “explosive style” – chopped into small bites and tossed in a wok with oil heated near its smoke point for just a whisper of time. If you prefer meat to innards, you can sample the same cooking technique with strips of lamb with leeks (爆炒羊肉, bàochǎo yángròu).
Interesting ingredients and twists on classic dishes don’t stop at offal on this menu. Boiled edamame (花椒毛豆, huājiāo máodòu) comes seasoned with tongue-tickling Sichuan peppercorns rather than a sprinkling of salt. Housemade pickled vegetables (家常泡菜, jiācháng pàocài) include the usual cabbage and carrots, but also angular Solomon’s seal. The spiral of a flower is better known in the West among naturalists than diners, but serves as a crunchy blank canvas for the pungent flavors of Sichuan-style kimchi.
No matter what you order, you’ll want a bottle of beer or a glass of sour plum juice (酸梅汤, suānméitāng) to cool the mouth fires. While Yi Zhang Hong is not as spicy as some Sichuan restaurants around town, your lips will still feel the burn.
Published on May 25, 2016
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