A Hunan Hole in the wall

June 8th, 2010

I love discovering tiny hole in the wall restaurants that serve fantastic meals at unbelievable prices points. These food adventures does not happen very often and when they do I feel compelled to share them. My dear friend Joey Campillio and I made dinner plans for the weekend and he was raving about this little chinese hole in the wall near Rockwell. I got equally excited and reserved our Saturday night for this. We easily found the place as I am familiar with the area, but if your are not it might be tricky to find. The restaurant is called YOU JIE XIAO CHAO. There is no big signage but at any given time there place is buzzing with people. Mostly Chinese nationals looking for authentic Hunan cuisine.

This is the entrance of the restaurant.

Hunan cuisine to my knowledge is a region in China that serves medium to spicy dishes which features lots of saucy stews, tofu and the famous Kung pao chicken. I was able to try Chinese Hunan in Shanghai once and I remember really enjoying it. You have to manage all your expectations when eating at this restaurant. The ambience is really genuine chinese! LOL! Bright lights, simple furniture and laid back service. The star of the restaurant is its food and that’s why so many people come here. The place is always full and you have to wait a few minutes to get a table.

The ambience inside. The place must be doing so well that I noticed that the next door was being renovated to accommodate more patrons.

I was really lucky because I met some kind readers of my blog (NAKS! LOL) on the way out of the restaurant and I asked them what to order. They suggested the Fish soup, the Kung Pao chicken and the dumplings. Joey has been here 4 times already so he knows what is good too. The food came fast and it was fresh and tasted really authentic.

I loved the picture-menu which makes it so much easier to order.

So many dishes to choose from.

When your in this restaurant you somehow instantly feel like your in China! Everyone in the restaurant with the exception one or two tables were Chinese and I saw this as a good sign. They also had Tsingtao beer which goes so well with this kind of food. The verdict?! I ENJOYED IT! I would definitely come back and try other dishes. Since the portions are quite big it is best to come here in a group so you can order more, The unlimited rice is also a plus.

The meal comes with unlimited rice which you serve yourself in a rice cooker in the back.

I loved the spicy fish soup and the Kung -Pao chicken was amazing! the dumplings though were really bland so you need to create a rich dipping sauce to fully enjoy this. We also ordered some eggplant which was also good but it came with so much oil that you get a bit turned off by this. I looked around the other tables and there were still so much beautiful dishes to try like the Fish head soup and the crispy ribs. So I vowed to come back and try this.