Restaurant: Hunan Mao
Location: 8728 Valley Blvd, Rosemead, CA 91770. (626) 280-0588
Date: April 29, 2018
Cuisine: Hunan Chinese
Rating: Good, but not super super spicy
My wife and son were out of town this Sunday in a school trip so of course I had to organize a bunch of dads (and others) to head out to the SGV for some “real Chinese (food).”
Hunan Mao is probably the second best known SGV Hunan restaurant and somehow I’d never been, so we decided to rectify that.
Crunchy pickled radish with chili on the table.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
The giant Menu
I needed a crib sheet to organize the ordering!
Giant Steamed Fish Head Casserole w/ Special Hot Pepper and Tofu.This is a Hunan classic, with the pickled chili peppers, and the tofu takes it to the next level (I like this kind of soft tofu).
Beef served cold with special spicy sauce. Everything seems to be “special” but this is the relatively usual beef/beef tendon with chili oil. Like spicy corned beef!
Cold noodles. With special chili sauce, of course. Very nice tangy/spicy noodles.
XLB. These aren’t Hunan, but I had to order them anyway. They were pretty decent XLB too.
Smoked Hunan ham with bamboo and hot pepper. Really good, really aromatic dish. The bacon-like ham, the crunchy bamboo, the pickled chilies. Yum! All bound together by a deep heat.
House Special Chicken with hot sauce. This is the Hunan Mao version of the “most typical” Hunan Chili dish. Not as crazy red/green chili as at Hunan Chili King.
Eggplant with preserved egg. This unusual dish (which I’ve had once before at China Tasty) has spectacular umami. Everyone loved it.
Mao’s Special Braised Pork Belly. So good we ordered another round of it!
Cumin Lamb. More peppers — plus cumin and lamb.
These black plates make for nice photography.
Hunan style bullfrog with chilies. Same chilies as the chicken — different “white meat.” The frog actually had a better flavor. More little bones.
MaPo Tofu (pocked marked old lady face tofu). One of my favorites, and technically Szechuan, but this was a very good version with lots of salty/numbing/spicy goodness.
And a MaPo zoom.
A trio of gelato flavors made by me (in my alto ego as the Sweet Milk Gelato chef). Lavender Blueberry Gelato, Pineapple Rosemary Sorbetto, and Brillat-Savarin Gelato with Sicilian Candied Orange.
Overall, Hunan Mao is very good and they really treated us well. We had a nice big table, great service, and no corkage. The price was ludicrously low considering how much food we had. Food is very good. Certainly quite Hunan, and medium spicy (very spicy for the neophyte). They aren’t as “serious” about their chilies as Hunan Chili King, which is still the SGV Hunan gold standard. HCK is hotter, and the chilies have both brighter red/green/orange color and a more serious pickled quality. But Hunan Mao (the former chairman came from Hunan province) has a lot of good variety and some really tasty dishes.
It wasn’t a serious wine night, but I photoed most of them the same:
