Spicy Dishes Go by the Numbers

My friend K.C. noticed that the door was ajar at the Chung King Restaurant in Monterey Park, so he got up to close it. Soon after, when the mountains of Sichuan chile peppers in our food began to take over our respiratory systems and cause our skins to flush, he realized that somebody clever must have left it open.

Named after what until recently had been one of the largest cities in the south-central Chinese province of Sichuan, Chung King is the quintessential Sichuan restaurant in this country. The frozen Chinese food with the same name bears no resemblance to the searing, hearty food of Chongqing, which is now its own province.

Your first experience of the small, unprepossessing restaurant begins in the parking lot when the sting of red chile starts to tickle your nose.

Inside, tables are crammed into the rectangular dining room. In the rear is a cold buffet stocked with starters such as marinated kidneys, anchovy and fried peanuts, garlic sprouts and chile-drenched beef tongue, sliced thinner than a Westside carpaccio.

Most customers start by heading to the buffet to fill their appetizer plates. The Chinese-speaking waitresses tote up the charges based on what’s taken from the buffet. This is a winning strategy for non-Chinese speakers. The best way to order from the bilingual 156-item menu is by number, at least for those who aren’t daunted by dishes with names like No. 50, fried shredded pork with pickled mustard tuber, and No. 96, homely konyakku tofu.

The menu explains that the chef, Chen Qing-Ping, has a special grade of competence in his homeland. It needn’t. A bite of practically any dish is all it takes to realize how much skill it took to make it. This place is a magic carpet ride to Sichuan.

This isn’t, however, food for the faint of heart. The featured special No. 6, Chung King-style hot chopped chicken, may be the hottest dish in the Chinese repertoire. It’s an enormous dish packed with chopped sauteed chicken, black mushrooms and mildly blackened, paper-thin Sichuan peppers, which color the mixture red. The flavor is extraordinary, but eating this alone, without white rice, is near lethal.

Milder, perhaps, but still fearsome is No. 9, dried beef slices fried with Sichuan hot pepper. It looks like a pile of crisp little shingles, but the penetrating flavor is the very essence of high-quality beef. Keep some kind of liquid--perhaps a Chinese beer--close at hand. The range of this kitchen is amazing. A section of the menu is devoted to rice crust dishes. Sheets of crisped rice arrive on a platter; the waiter douses them with gravy laced with either chicken, pork, fresh squid or sea cucumber, and they relax into the sauce. The result is so delicious you’ll wonder how you ever relished anything as pedestrian as sizzling rice soup. (None of these rice crust dishes, incidentally, is too spicy for a 5-year-old.)

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Let us not forget Sichuan classics such as No. 35, roasted spareribs in prickly ash and salt, which are mildly spicy and have a sweetly medicinal flavor, and No. 39, fried Chinese bacon with garlic sprouts--call it meat and greens taken to the highest level. One of the best fish dishes here is No. 71, braised fish with hot bean paste. The assertive, salty sauce accentuates the sweetness of the delicate rock cod.

From the section called local-flavored snacks, try the simple but satisfying hot minced pork noodles, and, if you can take it, No. 134, hot-sauced wontons, the world’s hottest dumpling dish. (The only non-spicy dish in this section, for the record, is poor, bland No. 130: minced pork noodles.)

In all, about 80% of the menu items are starred with the tiny red icon that symbolizes hot pepper. So the next time I go to the restaurant on a cool night, I will make sure the door remains wide open.

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Chung King Restaurant, 206 S. Garfield Ave., Monterey Park. (626) 280-7430. Open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Beer and wine. Parking in rear. Cash only. Dinner for two, $23 to $39.

What to Get: Chung King-style hot chopped chicken, dried beef slices fried with Sichuan hot pepper, crisp rice crust with chicken slices, hot sauced wontons, roasted spareribs in prickly ash and salt.