[San Gabriel] [Chinese] 辣椒王湖南土菜館 Hunan Chilli King

Hunan Chilli King
辣椒王湖南土菜館
534 E Valley Blvd, #2
San Gabriel, CA 91776
(626) 288-7993

Szechuan Cuisine is Dr. P’s favorite Chinese food. When I ask him what does he feel like eating, 70% of the time he says “spicy Chinese food”. I’ve seen Hunan Chilli King’s sign when I drove by Valley Blvd. So when Dr. P mentioned that he would like to have some spicy Chinese, I suggested we try this new restaurant.

We went there pretty late, around 9pm. Not only the restaurant was full, there were tons of people waiting outside. We went inside to see if there was a waiting list to sign. But the waitress just told us to go outside and wait in line.

花生蘿蔔 Peanut & Radish

After waiting for about 15 minutes, we got a table. The waitress brought us some peanut and spicy radish. After ordering from the menu, she asked us how spicy do we want our food to be. We requested medium spicy, and she shook her head, looked at Dr. P, and said, “I don’t think so. Just try mild first. If you don’t think it’s spicy enough, then we’ll add more.”

孜然羊肉 Cumin Lamb ($8.99)

The first dish that came to the table was Cumin Lamb. I love the flavor of cumin, and it goes so perfectly with lamb. With cumin and cilantro, I could eat the lamb with 2 bowls of rice. The mild spicy lamb was pretty spicy in my opinion.

炒空心菜根 Sauteed Water Morning Glory ($7.99)

Sauteed Water Morning Glory was made with chili and black bean. It was fresh and crunchy. I like mixing the vegetable with my rice. After giving us two mild spicy dishes, our waitress came back and see if it was spicy enough for us. Dr. P’s ego got him. He said it wasn’t spicy enough and requested the next dish to be medium spicy.

水煮牛肉魚片 Water Boiled Beef & Fish ($13.99)

Big mistake! Water Boiled Beef & Fish was sooooooo spicy. I only took 2 bites, then my eyes got watery and nose started running. My lips and tongue were numb for a long long time. Their “medium” spicy was like “super super” spicy in any other restaurant. We saw the Chinese people from other people were eating the food just fine. But their non-Chinese friends were all saying “OMG OMG this is SPIIIIICY!”.

Hunan Chilli King gotta be the spiciest restaurant I’ve ever been to. While we were eating, we overheard the waitress telling all the other Chinese customer about their special of the night, fresh escargot, which wasn’t on the menu. But she didn’t tell us. Why not? Did Dr. P look like he doesn’t eat escargot? Discrimination….

The food here is great and we like it a lot. We learned our lesson. Next time, we’ll definitely order mild spicy!

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August 11th, 2009 | Category: EAT | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL

wen:
August 11th, 2009 at 4:13 pm

Ok..I’m going to show this post to my hubby.

I think he’ll like it!

SAMMY:
August 12th, 2009 at 1:25 pm

went there one time..the waiter always recommend the same dish to other customer…forgot the taste…I think not bad…but you gotta read those chinese poster on the wall…it’s really funny how they try to combine the name of the restaurant into chinese poetry. haha

I didn’t really read the Chinese poster menu because I thought the writing was hard to read.
Next time I’ll pay closer attention.

Kirk:
August 13th, 2009 at 9:27 am

Hi Eileen – When we ordered our food “Big Spicy” at Hunan Chilli King, we were told; “our medium spicy, is everyone’s big spicy”. They sure weren’t kidding! There’s a steamed eggplant dish listed on one of the strips of paper that was really good.

They definitely weren’t kidding.
Why don’t they just change their medium to big and mild to medium spicy?
Dr. P really wants to return to this restaurant again.
We’ll definitely try the eggplant dish next time…. mild spicy of course.