Comments on: Chinatown on Mondays

By: SaltShaker » Blog Archive » Whirligig

SaltShaker » Blog Archive » Whirligig — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 15:53:05 +0000

[...] the main course, I thought a variation on Eggplant Yu-Xiang was in order, as the host wanted something with a good amount of ginger and spice. Instead of the [...]

By: dan

dan — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 21:42:54 +0000

I’ve been back to this spot a few times since, and it’s definitely one of the more solid spots in Barrio Chino - I stand by my original thought that they need to spice things up a bit more and they do tend to use a bit much oil - but the first is easily remedied by telling your waitress that you’d like it spicy the way the Chinese would eat it - in fact, I just received a note from my friend Grant that he asked them for something more typically Chinese, and the waitress pointed to a list of items only in Chinese on the back of the menu and told him that those are what they eat - he picked one, I think at random, and had a great dish - so I’ll have to get back there and do the same!

By: SaltShaker » Blog Archive » Service with a Smile

SaltShaker » Blog Archive » Service with a Smile — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 13:43:29 +0000

[...] One of my all time favorite vegetable dishes in Chinese cooking, a Szechuan dish, is Eggplant Yu-Xiang style. It’s spicy, it involves eggplant, which I love, and it’s kind of cool to pronounce. Unfortunately, Los Manjares couldn’t make it - quite simply it turns out, because there were no Asian eggplants, though long skinny ones, available in the markets. The manager explained that Yu-Xiang made with Italian style eggplants simply doesn’t work out right - the taste is wrong, the texture is wrong, and they simply won’t substitute. Something good to know - and might lead to a kitchen experiment here to explore the difference in the way they turn out… I accepted her recommendation for the spicy vegetable and pork stir-fry. It was good, but lacking in spice - I forgot to make it clear that I wanted it spicy by the standards of anyone who isn’t either Argentine or Italian… those little things one has to remember at times - we’d been having such a lovely chat that I guess I just assumed she’d picked up I wasn’t a porteño… perhaps she had, and just forgot to communicate it to the chef. Regardless, it was a nice mixture of peppers, onions, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and Italian eggplant, lightly spiced, with shreds of pork. Decent in its own right, nothing special. [...]

By: SaltShaker » Blog Archive » Mixed Roundup

SaltShaker » Blog Archive » Mixed Roundup — Tue, 30 May 2006 21:17:47 +0000

[...] This dish was the winner of the lunch, at least from my view. Though listed as poco picante, it was anything but - quite spicy, and vinegary, and really excellent. It’s shredded pork “trilla yu xiang” style. Now, trilla in Spanish means something which is beaten or threshed, sort of like grain, and I’m guessing it’s just a mistranslation on the menu. Why should Chinese menus translated into Spanish be any better translated than into English? Yu Xiang style I discussed a couple of weeks ago - basically a spicy hot bean sauce with lots of ginger and garlic. The vinegar was a bit surprising, but then, I’m sure there are many local variations on all sorts of dishes. We also had a plate of beef mee fan, a bit short on the beef, and a bit oily and flavorless for me. [...]