Lisa N.
Yelp
Don't be deterred by the 3 stars, this place is authentic and always packed with a wait. Food is amazing, service is a bit slow - they always seem overwhelmed... which is a sign that the food is great, but you'll have to be a bit patient. It definitely helps to have a Mandarin speaker in the group. Be prepared to handle spice, Hunan cuisine is not for a delicate palette.
My husband and our friends usually gravitate towards the same dishes, some of them chosen because we'd see all the other tables order it:
1) sautéed cauliflower with pork skin (chicharones) - Hands down my favorite dish! It's sautéed Chinese cauliflower, which is a bit sweeter and really soaks up the delicious sauce. Paired with the crispy pork rinds, I could easily finish this myself.
2) preserved pork with long bean - we saw many tables order this. It's thin pieces of smoked pork belly, with sautéed long bean which have a great chewy texture. DISCLAIMER: this dish is really salty and is meant to be eaten with mouthfuls of rice shoveled with each bite.
3) eggplant, preserved egg, and pepper - every table had this dish. If you see this brown wooden bowl/mortar, that's what it is. Kind of a creamy consistency with the smashed egg and eggplant. Tasty flavors
4) house special fish filets - super tender pieces of fish over a bed of a cabbage, covered in peppers and a spicy, savory sauce. These filets are like butter.
Honorable mention: many people get a stir fry frog dish, it was tender and tasty.
I call these dishes "rice killers." As in, you will devour copious amounts of rice with them. This is easily one of my fave places in SGV.
The people are friendly, but it's just so busy here that things feel slow. The timing of the dishes coming out was all over the place. They have a fridge where you can grab drinks, or you can get a pitcher of hot black tea. I personally like the glass bottles of soy milk.
Parking sucks, but we usually park in the plaza over with SG super store and have no issues.