Colin K.
Yelp
TLDR: A great place featuring Chinese BBQ skewers, but the dishes here are sure to impress. Get the lamb skewers, Big Plate Chicken, and a noodle dish if you're really hungry, but stay away from the beef skewers.
The main draw of the place is the Chinese BBQ skewer selection, which takes up the entire first page of the menu, but the dishes here are pleasantly surprising and certainly worth a try.
On this occasion, I tried the lamb, beef, beef tendon, and chicken gizzard skewers. The grill that lays atop the table isn't for cooking the meat, but rather just a fancy surface that your skewers lie on top of in order to keep warm. Though I was most excited about the skewers, they were mediocre at best. The lamb was by far the tastiest of the bunch, covered the great, cumin-y rub definitive of Xin Jiang cuisine, and having a perfect meat to fat ratio. The tendon was inconsistent, featuring some pieces with a perfect, gelatinous texture, and others that were just far too soft or inexplicably hard and crunchy. Having never had gizzard, I can only best describe it as a bit like clam meat with a crunch, but it was mediocre at best. The beef skewers, however, were a huge disappointment, as all 3 I tried were extremely tough and chewy.
I will say, though, that portion sizes were quite fair, and each skewer fairly substantial. Xin Jiang BBQ does offer a huge selection of skewers (including bull testicles, if you're feeling adventurous), so I'd recommend sampling at least a few varieties. Stick to the lamb, though, for the majority of your order.
In my opinion, the dishes are where this place actually shone the most. Our party ordered the grilled enoki, grilled eggplant (these were listed on the skewer side of the menu), noodle soup with pork and pickled greens, and the Big Plate Chicken, the last one being a classic Xin Jiang dish.
Xin Jiang BBQ does an excellent job in packing tons of flavor into their dishes, and they taste authentic and well seasoned. The grilled enoki had a seasoning rub reminiscent of the classic cumin-y rub on the skewers, but with a little more kick that elevated it. While I am not usually a fan of eggplant, this places' rendition features tons of roasted garlic on top, making it one of the only times I went back for seconds for an eggplant dish.
Having lived in China myself and sampled the chicken dish and the noodles in an authentic setting, I can attest that this place does a pretty good job. The Big Plate chicken comes in a heaping bowl with potatoes, peppers, and cut up chicken drumsticks in a delicious, spicy, gravy, with thick cut noodles on the side to mix in afterwards. The noodles with pork and pickled greens featured a clear broth that actually had great flavor, rather than the standard salty, watery liquid that accompanies many clear-broth noodle dishes in Houston's China Town. Though it wasn't my favorite dish, I can easily recommend it as a great noodle soup.
To top it all off, this place prices pretty farily, too. As the only place I've yet to visit in Houston that can serve great Xin Jiang food, I'd easily come in if I had a craving for skewers, and I'm excited to try some of the other dishes. Load up on the lamb and get the Big Plate Chicken, and I'm fairly sure you could feed 2-3 for about $10 a person. My only beef with this place is that theirs was terrible.