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After establishing an ardent fan base with two locations in New York, Szechuan Mountain House has opened in Rowland Heights. Szechuan Mountain House offers popular Sichuan favorites like mapo tofu, twice-cooked pork, and kung pao shrimp, as well as classic Sichuan dishes seldom seen on menus in the U.S. Diners will be surprised by the Yibin-style ran noodles, also known as burning noodles, which are chewy, dry noodles that are flavorful, spicy, and salty from cardamine bean sprouts and roasted nut powder. The name “burning noodles” comes from the fact that traditional cooking methods add lard and chile oil to the noodles, which can be ignited without the use of water. In decades prior, people would light up the noodle as a wick for kerosene lamps.
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Eschewing the bursts of red and communal tables of their predecessors, these places flaunted stylish interiors with intimate seating. Some featured rustic elements meant to evoke Chinese villages; others were more East Village-y, with exposed concrete surfaces, deejays, and futuristic light fixtures. After reopening her celebrated porridge-based restaurant last month, chef Minh Phan decided to close Porridge + Puffs after all. The Historic Filipinotown restaurant opened in 2018 but began years prior as a pop-up. Jonathan Gold called Phan’s porridge bowls colored with pickles, jammy eggs, flowers and other culinary delights “as dazzling in its complexity as anything coming out of the most famous kitchens in town.” After a pandemic-spurred closure in 2021, Phan reopened the restaurant this year.
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For all three diners, it was strange to see food that originated from humble peasants now nestled in opulent ceramic vessels that wouldn’t look out of place in the Forbidden Palace. “My aunt used to serve this in the same enamel basin she used to wash the vegetables,” the other Gen X-er, a Chengdu native, smirked. Peanuts are introduced to the usual ox tongue and tripe in chile oil, adding crunch to the slipperiness. Indeed, Szechuan Mountain House should receive plaudits for offering pig intestines and kidneys, fish maws, curdled blood, and the notably-named “strapping cattle throat” ($10.95) — rubbery white strips of integument that’s popular in Chongqing, a major municipality in southwest China. Some dishes require as many as 20 spices, with a rainbow of peppercorns imported from Sichuan for the job.
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The New York City location of this Allston Szechuan spot is an institution, and it’s one of the few transplant restaurants in Boston we’re actually excited about. Their swinging pork belly dish has mandolined strips of meat and cucumber draped over a wooden stand, with the whole thing dangling above a bowl of garlic and chili oil. Once it arrives at your table, it’ll first get your attention for presentation, and then for being your new favorite way to eat pork belly. Order that, the pepper lover chicken that has some decent spice without setting your tongue on fire, and a couple of other plates to celebrate crushing the first half of the workweek. One of NYC’s best Chinese restaurants has opened in L.A.—or, to be more precise, Rowland Heights’ Pearl Plaza, which also houses Eat Joy Food, a 2023 Michelin Bib Gourmand.
Some other classics include Sichuan dishes like mao xue wang, a stew of ox tripe, duck blood, beef tongue, chicken gizzard and other offal simmered in a peppercorn and chile-laced broth. The crispy free-range laziji chicken is stir-fried with dried chiles, dried Sichuan chile peppers, spicy bean paste, garlic, ginger, and topped with toasted sesame seeds and sliced spring onions. After opening a local chain of ramen shops, chef Ryohei Ito recently expanded his Rakkan empire with a new izakaya-inspired restaurant downtown. Housed in the former Fundamental space, Rakkan Miso Izakaya serves a limited selection of the plant-based-broth and noodles in which Rakkan Ramen excels, but a range of new items are also on offer.
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“We are also dedicated to using free-range chicken and other seasonal ingredients and vegetables,” says Zhu. Szechuan Mountain House boasts a large fan base in New York, and its locations in Manhattan and Flushing frequently make the New York Times’s 100 Best Restaurants list and Eater NY’s list of 38 Essential Restaurants. It’s not uncommon for lines to regularly span wait times of an hour and a half or more. Manager Jerry Wang hopes that the restaurant will be just as well received in LA.
Chefs Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson have debuted the second location of their California-minded rotisserie, Kismet Rotisserie, opening a walk-up window within Studio City retail center the Shops at Sportsmen’s Lodge. Restaurant is nearly two years in the making and features a transportive, serene aesthetic with fish ponds, trees, Chinese flower art, calligraphy and other touches inspired by Taoism utilizing harmonious layout and incorporating nature. The dining room is almost maze-like, with tables tucked into alcoves and in wooden structures; one table can be found under a small pagoda built for larger parties. The thought of Sichuanese cuisine brings to mind many adjectives, but “classy” is perhaps not the first. And fair enough; what mental image of Sichuanese food is more often conjured up than mountainous heaps of blood-red peppers, glorious waves of capsaicin-induced head sweats, and a conspicuous indifference to décor? Without denying its patrons either of the first two, Szechuan Mountain House, with its koi pond, bamboo groves, and delicately pruned bonsai, styles China’s most famous regional cuisine for the ambience-conscious age, happily challenging the notion that vibrancy of flavor must come at the price of presentability.
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There are Sichuan standards, too, including twice-cooked pork, kung pao shrimp, and a ma po tofu ($10.95) that manages to taste better than any other with its silky tofu, earthy fermented bean paste, and daring oiliness. When it wants to, Mountain Szechuan can serve straight-up Sichuan, and it doesn’t stint on the peppercorns. Next up was mao xue wang, a stew of ox tripe, duck blood, and beef tongue—which, legend has it, was conceived by a butcher named Wang—that arrived burbling in a lavalike soup that packed the heat of firecrackers ignited on your tongue. Originally cooked during the nineteen-forties by laborers near the meat markets along the Yangtze River, who couldn’t stand to see the gristle and offal go to waste at the end of the day, mao xue wang became the regional chop suey of the working class.
The focus here is on grilled meat, seafood and vegetable skewers such as chicken thigh, Hokkaido scallop, sausage and tofu, plus popular, classic izakaya items such as karaage, katsu and donburi. A selection of hosomaki, nigiri and other sushi is also available, as is natural wine, beer, sake and a menu of sake cocktails. Also on the novel side are round shrimp fritters sided with sliced spuds, like pink ping pong balls with paddles; and planks of mung bean starch in chile oil and Sichuan peppercorns that wiggle and wobble in a glistening array.
The 5,000 square-foot space inside the Pearl Plaza was a feat years in the making. The space sports similar designs to the NYC locations, with koi ponds, cascading waterfalls, bamboo groves, Chinese flower art, calligraphy, lanterns, and ceramics. The Boston location marks the fourth restaurant opening for Szechuan Mountain House.
Zhi Min Zhu, who hails from Sichuan, is the culinary director of all the Szechuan Mountain House locations and is in charge of training all of the kitchen teams. Zhu has been working with Szechuan Mountain House since 2015 at the New York East Village location and has helped train the team at the new Rowland Heights location. Málà Project is a great Chinese restaurant in the East Village that specializes in dry pot. Szechuan Mountain House is open for indoor dining, outdoor dining, and takeout - and they also have a location in the East Village in case that’s more convenient to you. This Chinese restaurant in the East Village specializes in soup dumplings, and it's just good enough to keep you coming back for more.
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