2.1 - Yun Chuan Garden Inc
Posted on January 9, 2008
Filed Under Chinese, Extra Hard Core | 1 Comment
Welcome to year 2 of 50meals. It’s been incredibly busy here - my good friend Michelle got married, I’m also starting to shoot menus for restaurants now, and of course, there’s events and weddings galore… whew!
Anyway, I’m happy to finally sit down and write an entry.
We’re kicking off this year with a bang, as I stumbled across this great Yunnan Chinese place. Yunnan a province south of Szechuan, which is famous for its spicy food. Yunnan shares the spicy food culture with Szechuan, as you’ll see from some of the items here today. But first, a heart warming story behind the house special noodle soup…
So the story goes that a young man was studying for the official test (This is how you become successful in China back in the old days, you study and go take this written exam put up by the government and if you do well, you’re given a government administrative job and you can have wealth and land, etc.) So the young man elected to study every day on an island, and his wife would bring him lunch. One day she decided to bring a clay pot of hot soup base and raw chicken, veggies, noodles, and toss in everything into the pot when she got to where he was on the island. For freshness, I suppose. Husband loved the soup noodles, did well on the exam because he was healthy and could concentrate, and got to be a respected official in the local government. He shared his wife’s recipe with his friends and colleagues and here we are, having chicken noodles “cooked” at our tables in Los Angeles.
Yunnan Rice Noodle Soup. Very much like the olden days, the soup base is brought to your table and you toss in the meats, veggies, and noodles at your table. This was really good and is the lightest and easiest soup noodle to eat, almost like Pho.
We move on to heavier stuff next, this part gets pretty hot.
Wontons Tossed with Chili Sauce. Oh, this was fantastic, the wontons were good sized and the portion of meat stuffed in the thin soft skin was very generous, great meaty flavor. This was combined with this kick ass spicy greasy sauce and it’s fantastic. The Chili sauce is not just spicy, it has some spectacular flavors and really launches the wontons into orbit. I’m so coming back for this.
Stir Fried Lamb. Unfortunately this isn’t anything totally outstanding, lamb is always good and they used some very nice chinky and fatty pieces here, but it wasn’t knocked out of the park like the wontons were.
Boiled fish in Szechuan Special Sauce. This one totally reminded me of Spices, so you know we’re in a good place. Big bowl of fish with veggies filling out the bottom of the bowl, this stuff is hard core spicy and hard core garlicky. Spec-ta-cu-lar.
Ma Po Yam Cake. This stuff is interesting. It’s like konjac except it’s made from yams. The Yam cake is kind of bland but the chinese sour cabbage and all the spices were fantastically flavorful. I kept digging at the cabbage, but I think next time I’d try something else.
The restaurant is very clean despite being a very simple and hole-in-the-wall sort of place. Service was decent and our waitress actually got us a second bowl of hot soup base after I spent so long taking pictures. All of this stuff is also very cheap and they do give you very very generous portions. Definitely bring a lot of people and go nuts so you can try lots of different things.
Yun Chuan Garden
301 N Garfield Ave #D
Monterey Park, CA 91754
(626) 571-8387