Chung King

[brescd01]

Free at last, free at last, I am free at last!

[philadining]

Are you suggesting that they are open?

www.ckgarden.com

[shacke]

translation?

[brescd01]

I am suggesting that when they are open I know I will find religion.

[MarketStEl]

And here I thought the Civil Rights Movement had been reborn!

So whose dream is this?

[handmc]

Your dream is our nightmare in Chester Co. Trifco's was my favorite and so close by. Now I have to drive to philly for the chef's great food.

Which means I will not be able to enjoy it as often.

[brescd01]

April 20, Thursday, is liberation day!

[SaxChik]

April 20, Thursday, is liberation day!

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do i smell road trip?!!

[herp17]

Hi everybody,

Been in the shadows for the longest time but finally going to start posting.

This place looks awesome. It might put Tasty house out of business due to the more authetic menu. Just looking at the menu is making my eyes spin.

[KatieLoeb]

April 20, Thursday, is liberation day!

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do i smell road trip?!!

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This place looks awesome. It might put Tasty house out of business due to the more authetic menu.

I smell a side-by-side Szechuan Dumpling Smackdown in the near future...

[percyn]

How about a dumpling smackdown tomorrow (Sun Apr 23rd)? I will post in the ISO thread too.

[herp17]

Might have to go in tonight to try it out. It's rainy and slight chilly outside = perfect excuse to have Szechuan Food.

[herp17]

Well, we just came back from Chung King. I don't think Tasty House is going to have any problems staying opening. Chung King was good but I think Tasty House is still better. Again, this was the first day for Chung King, we should have waiting for good two weeks for them to work out the kinks before trying.

We had Whole Fish with Bean Sauce, Chung King Cold Noodle, GuoQiao Wanton and Szechuan styling string beans.

The Chung King Cold Noodles were good. Egg noodles with hot oil, peanut sauce with grounded up ginger (i think?). Nothing special, just egg noodles with sauce.

The wantons were filled with pork and steamed with a side of hot oil/peanut sauce.

The Szechuan styling string beans were excellent.

The Whole fish with Bean Sauce had good sauce but was not cooked all the way. I normally don't get bothered by things like this but I had to say something. The waitress had the fish steamed again and it was great. The sauce was good but I still think Tasty house Szechuan fish is better.

I think the problem we had was that we kept comparing Chung King with Tasy House when we should have just focused on things that only Chung King has. I think should should have just tried the Signature Series of water-boiled or pickled pepper hot pots. In a nut shell, Chung King is sort of the same as Tifco's. As food and service. The service was a little bit lacking especially when there were a ton of waiters but pretty much all they did was just sit in the front and chatted the whole time. It was hard to wave down a waiter when we needed service.

Again, they just opened and need to work out some kinks. Hopefully by next week all this will be reach, cause I want to try some more stuff like the signature series.

[herp17]

Oh yeah, another thing, the items we ordered weren't really that hot. It wasn't numblingly hot. Maybe we just ordered all the wrong dishes.

Edited April 23, 2006 by herp17 (log)

[brescd01]

I have to disagree. Chung King is everything I hoped for and more. I love Szechuan Tasty House, which gets better and better, but its menu does not have a fraction of the depth of Chung King.

Chung King is not offering just Szechuan dishes either, it also has a sizable northern Chinese menu. The menu has such depth that my wife and I could return five times and not explore all its lurking beauties, to paraphrase Melville.

I agree about the dishes' temperature, though this worked in our favor because Chinese food usually is too hot for me to eat right away anyway.

Everything we had was good (wonton) to extraordinary (steamed dumplings and Dan Dan noodles). Pork loin looked like a prop from the film Eat Drink Man Woman, which is to say, beautiful.

The cuisine was an education about poorly served Chinese cuisines, relative to the ubiquitous Cantonese or Fujianese.

There are two authentic Szechuan restaurants in Manhattan by comparison, and no northern Chinese ones (that I have heard of).

Our waitress spoke fluent English and was very sweet and willing to explain everything. The whole affair, despite the space, which resembles a Chinese banquet hall in all its tacky glory, resembled someone's kitchen, with family members serving dishes mom prepared in the back. Most Cantonese are brusque. The staff here are warm and patient by comparison, and they are dressed differently and look physically different from the Cantonese staff in other restaurants.

To be honest, this is a restaurant best appreciated by "specialists:" people looking for General Tso's will probably miss 90% of Chung King's uniqueness. Its head chef (I think) is an intellectual and I hope his restaurant gets the recognition from Craig Leban that it deserves.

[KatieLoeb]

As food and service. The service was a little bit lacking especially when there were a ton of waiters but pretty much all they did was just sit in the front and chatted the whole time. It was hard to wave down a waiter when we needed service.

I see they brought the lousy staff with them from Tifco's. That's just great.

[chowfun]

We were there last night as well. We had very attentive friendly service. Our waitress spoke English but was not really able to explain dishes to us, so we just took some chances and ordered. We brought some hoppy beer Bell's Left Hand Ale and Yards IPA that we drank out of parfait cups that they gave us. It actually worked out fine and they worked well with the food.

We too had the GuiQuao wanton. I think they were pork and fish mixed together. They tasted a bit like fish balls with a pork texture and color. They were very good and I was happy that they arrived with all of the other dishes because they helped put out the fire. The noodle on the wontons was thin, delicate and delicious. I have only had the szechuan dumplings at Szechuan Tasty House, and the skins were doughy and thick.

We had the spicy Jia Xiang noodle and they were great. The noodles were a homemade texture, the meat and spice paste covering them was spicy from ground chiles, szechuan peppercorn and garlic. There were bright green, tender, blanched baby bok choy mixed in for a crunchy juicy texture to contrast with the noodles and spicy paste and to put out the fire. This was a hot dish. Not the hottest possible food ever but it was definately two to three stars. Enough to induce nose running and mild sweating in two people who eat hot food regularly.

The big winner of the evening was the shredded pork szechuan style. The pork pieces had a spicy rub on them and then they were flash fried so that they were almost crispy and served with chopped dried chiles.

At the entrance of the restaurant they had a buffet set up and for 5.95 you could sample some premade items. There was tripe, cucumbers, duck tongues and some things that I couldnt readily identify. I might try some of this next time, because the wait for our order to be cooked was about 15-20 minutes and they brought everything together.

[brescd01]

Chowfun, you seem very sophisticated: what is the spice in the noodles that makes water taste funny afterwards and is tingly, not exactly spicy, to the tongue?

[Diann]

Chowfun, you seem very sophisticated: what is the spice in the noodles that makes water taste funny afterwards and is tingly, not exactly spicy, to the tongue?

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Are you talking about the Sichuan peppercorn?

[brescd01]

I think that is it, thanks. The Chinese call it huajiao and we discovered it at Szechuan Tasty House when we ordered huajiao chicken off the menu.

[herp17]

As food and service. The service was a little bit lacking especially when there were a ton of waiters but pretty much all they did was just sit in the front and chatted the whole time. It was hard to wave down a waiter when we needed service.

I see they brought the lousy staff with them from Tifco's. That's just great.

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Well, here was the situation. When we first got there, two guys (not sure if they were waiters or friends of the place) came up and talked to us. They emphasized that everything was really hot and to be careful. When we were finally really to order, one of the guys took our order. So we figured that he would be our waiter for the night. After taking our order, he spent the rest of the night chatting with people near the cashier. Numerous times I try to flag him down to add an extra item but finally gave up.

In place of him, was a nice friendly waitress bring out our food. But it was obvious that she and another waitress was serving the whole place. So two or three people were waiting tables while others were just chatting. I don't know if they are waiters or what. Again, I don't know what's going on but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. It's their first night, nothing is perfect on the first night.

Also, again, the fish we ordered wasn't done. Everything else was good. And the fish was good once it came back to us done. And I do agree, the list of items is very impressive compared to Tasty house but they might need some time to get things straight and settle. I foresee numerous future visits to explore the menu.

[rlibkind]

Percyn and I met there noontime Sunday. It didn't take long to be served or for our food to arrive (though it did seem to take forever when we ordered some "to go" dishes after we finished our meal).

As for the food, the small sampling we consumed will have me returning. I can't resist lamb, so we ordered the "pickled pepper" version. It was a classic. Rich meats do so well when matched with an appropriate sour accompaniment, even more so when there's just a touch of sweetness. Now, in the American-Chinese cuisine I grew up on, that would be exemplified by "sweet and sour" dishes, which of course were just sweet (cloying), with lots of orange food coloring and no detectable "sour". The "pickled pepper" lamb here, however, was a fine example of how meats and acidity can work together. The chef pickles a not hot, not sweet pepper, using that as a condiment when the lamb is stir-fried. The lamb itself was pefectly sliced and cooked, absolutely melt-in-your-mouth tender.

We also did a cold chicken dish (I don't recall the name), but basically it was served in a chili oil-sesame oil sauce, with flavors not unlike those found in a cold sesame noodle dish.

For our third course (the courses arrived bim-bam-boom, virtually all at once) we did fish. It was pieces of tilapia, bone in, which may well have been raw when they were put in the serving dish. But the serving dish was atop a full fire canned heat; the sauce was boiling when the server placed it on the table, and it continued boiling for another four or five minutes. As far as I was concerned, the fish was perfectly cooked. The server said the fish was live in the kitchen and killed to order, and it tasted that way. I think tilapia is an underrated fish. It is inexpesive and ubiquitious, because it grows so easily under farmed conditions. But it has a wonderfully sweet flesh and takes well to many different styles and means of cooking.

Percy's eyes lit up at the sight of the buffet by the entrance, filled with offal and other such things: pig ears, kidney, tripe, etc. I'll leave it to him to report on these items, some of which he took home.

She Who Must Be Obeyed, who did not join me for this mini-feast, asked that I bring back kung pao chicken. When the server asked me "Chinese or American", I asked for American, since SWMBO can take some degree of chili fire, but not a whole lot. I didn't taste it, but she reports it was flavorful, with some pepper heat but not over powerful.

I thought the heat level of the three items Percy and I ordered well within operational limits. The cold chicken had the most fire, of course, as a result of the chili oil. The fish had the usual dried chilis, but also other dried chilis of a less intense nature that added wonderful background flavors; you could even nibble on them directly without requiring a couple of quarts of beer. The lamb had a back-of-the-throat heat that was thoroughly enjoyable; based on the taste, my guess is the dish relied on a moderate seasoning with Sechuan peppercorns.

I think the chef's use of peppers for flavor, rather than mere heat, is what sets the cooking apart.

All in all, the food was quite good. The service needs improvement, but we were there, after all, on just their second day.

[percyn]

A few pictures to go along with Bob's commentary above...

Easy to locate and identify...915 Arch Street, just across from Sichuan Tasty House and the adjoining private parking lot.

Pickled pepper lamb

Cold Chicken Salad - I wanted to get one standard item from the Tifco's menu in order to compare the flavors and level of spice.

ChungKing River Fish (Chunks of Tilapia in this case). As you can see, this dish had some flair (pun intended ). The flames were quite high at first and at one point it looked like the oil in the sauce was about to catch fire. Luckily we escaped this brush with death to enjoy some good Sichuan food.

The fish boiling away

On the way out I could not pass up some of the organ meats, so I got

Pigs ears (the red and white stripped thing), beef strips (redish - could be heart), and beef tongue - The pig ear has a chewy texture, as does the beef strips, but the tongue is incredible.

As Bob and others have mentioned, these dishes had enough chili peppers in them to give your tongue a little tingle and enough Sichuan peppercorn and other spices to catch the back of your throat a bit. Personally I prefer this over the tongue numbing amount of chili some of the Tifco dishes had, but if that is your preference, I am sure they can "kick it up a notch" so to speak.

Eastlake1972 (one of the new owners), recognized us a eGullet members based on the dishes we ordered, which cracked me up.

[mrbigjas]

went tonight. i like.

seriously good stuff. the waitress appeared to barely speak english at the beginning of our meal, but at the end she was very pleasant, asking us if we liked everything and pointing out that americans don't often like spicy food. someday we as a country are going to shed that image.

from what little i know of sichuan cuisine, it appears to have a pretty high incidence of offal-based dishes. therefore, i need to go back, and relatively soon, because the folks i was with tonight just weren't interested.

[percyn]

James,

Did they have the "offal cart" by the entrance when you visited?