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Hu Nan Chinese Restaurant (Xiang cai wang) [Now Closed]
Address: 8166 Main Street (just off Marine Drive, on the banks of the North Arm of the Fraser River)
Tel: 604-323-8093

Hours:
Mon-Sun 11:30am-10:30pm

South of the Lake, North of the River

By Desmond Cheung
Eat Vancouver Columnist
Friday, January 6th, 2006

** (of four stars)

Enter Hu Nan Chinese Restaurant and you’ll feel as if you’ve walked through a hole-in-the-wall into someone’s house or into a typical restaurant in China. Or both. Despite the bright red-and-yellow awning of the exterior, the inside is shabbily familiar. Some ten tables, conveniently multi-layered with disposable table covers, fill the near-square dining area. Japanese fortune-beckoning cats mix with woven strings of chilli peppers, adding colour to the room. Several non-descript flower pots mask the sterility of the closed blinds, and traditional Chinese painting reprints (the kind you find marking the year on a freebie wall calendar) cover part of the faded-paint wall panels disturbed by heavyweight, tired-looking air conditioners. But through the pig-patterned door drape you might glimpse the chef (and head of this family-style operation) at work in the kitchen. It’s not the décor that most concerns us after all.

Touted as Vancouver’s first authentic Hunanese restaurant (you might ask what others there are about town) this local joint should be a destination for those who enjoy spicy Chinese food and are open eaters, prepared to try most things – if just the once. The place seems to be supported by an appreciative bevy of regulars – always a good sign – and my friends and I were asked if we were from out of town since we were not recognised. So, if the Vancouverite has probably never had Hunanese food elsewhere before, what should s/he expect here?

Chairman Mao Tse-tung liked to ask people about their native place, including the etymology of its name and its history. He never visited Vancouver but as for ‘Hunan’, it means ‘South of the Lake’ (the lake being Lake Dongting) and is a province located in central-southwestern China. The Great Helmsman is probably its most famous native son and would have been able to recommend what to order at a Hunanese restaurant like this, if you’d want him as a dinner companion. But as with any Chinese meal, it is best shared with friends and a variety of dishes including ones that make inspired use of the cuisine’s ‘secret ingredients’ would be the best bet.

Similar to the justly rated Sichuanese cuisine (see Eat Vancouver review ‘Golden Szechuan is Shiny’), Hunanese food gets fired up with generous amounts of chilli peppers. Indeed, ‘Huiguo rou’ or ‘twice-cooked bacon’ (here called ‘sliced pork with cabbage in garlic and chilli sauce’) is just one popular Sichuanese staple on the menu that hints at the connection. But Hu Nan’s pickled chilli peppers are possibly the spiciest chillies experienced by this reviewer’s palate outside Sichuan Province itself. Helpfully, the Hu Nan diner can keep an eye on the spiciness guide (marked by various symbols from the mild triangle to the circle of hotness) while ordering to reduce reliance on gulps of Chinese tea and Tsing-tao beer. But it’s not all about being flaming spice. A variety of pickled vegetables fill out the flavours of and add colour to many of the dishes, and less familiar ingredients to note and sample include smoked pork, dried tofu and lobok (daiken).

It’s always a good idea to pick at least one dish from the house specials and on my most recent visit this was ‘steamed spicy big head fish’. For this dish you can choose the fish head or stomach portion (priced at $19.95 and $15.95 respectively). We went for the fish head – everybody knows that cheeks are the most tender part of a fish – and we were not disappointed. The fish portion (when quizzed, the chef was unable to inform us the name of the fish in English, but I’d bet that it’s not ‘big head fish’) came sliced lengthways in a circular steaming dish, sprinkled over with finely chopped chilli and spring onions. It was steamed just right, still a bit pinkish and its garlicky juices gave the rice a tasty soak after the enjoyment of the fresh flavours of the fish itself. There were a few loose bones but it’s better not to eat too quick anyway. Other specials are the ‘pig intestine hot pot’ (can be a little chewy, but with opportunities for fiery succulence) chicken gizzards (one dish generously joined by white pickled chillies), and ‘steamed belly pork with dried vegetables’.

For the regular ‘by-meat-variety’ menu, you might try the ‘stirfried dried tofu and preserved bacon and smoked pork’ whose smoky flavour tints but does not overwhelm the peppers, Chinese leeks and onions. Some people might complain that the meat is a tad on the fatty side but while I don’t favour eating 100 per cent lean meat, I’d probably draw the line somewhere along the meat:fat ratio around the 2:1 mark. Similarly with the ‘Braised Pork of Mao’s Favourite’ – the Chairman grew to become quite a porker – which is also not for the faint/weak-hearted but whose fatty chunks of succulent pork worked well in the dark sauce. Another pork dish to try (it’s not my favourite meat but it is the most commonly eaten meat in China) is the ‘stirfried preserved white chilli and smoked pork’. My friend asked for this to be extra beyond-the-circle spicy. This smoky, (and yes) fatty pork provided a solid stage for the very garlicky, spicy bursts of flavour that popped out of the chillies. It was also topped with flakes of a different chilli, lightly oiled and giving the whole dish an edge of tang. Beef dishes I’ve tried at Hu Nan include: ‘stirfried shredded bamboo shoots with beef’ whose tender strings of beef work reasonably well, if uninspiredly, with bamboo slices; and ‘stirfried preserved chilli with beef’, in which the meat was slightly on the tough side and the near-numbing green chillies mixed with colouring carrots, which was not really a tasty alternative to the similar pork dish. For chicken, other than the poultry alternatives making use of pickles and chillies in ways already mentioned, the ‘stirfried chicken with three spice’ (san bei ji), a home-style dish popular from Taiwan to (apparently) Hunan, was a particular favourite of one group of friends I dined with at Hu Nan.

The restaurant’s regular, neo-generic Chinese fare includes: Kung Po chicken, mu siu pork (pork with egg and ‘wood ear’ fungus), pot stickers, noodles, chow mein, and deep fried oysters. The menu features few appetizers and those they have are nothing to write home about. One soup I tried was ‘fish balls and mushroom soup’ which was pretty bland, the fish balls no better than decent processed fish balls you can find in most Chinese grocery stores. Most dishes at Hu Nan cost between $8-12, with seafood dishes at $20 plus. They also have a $6-$7 lunch special which consists of one dish plus soup and rice and is served 11:30am-3:30pm.

All in all, I would encourage any fans of Chinese food, especially in its spicier varieties, to try Hu Nan and sample its dishes with pickles and chillies. Personally my loyalties still lie with Sichuanese cuisine but Hu Nan offers a different type of fire that I’d be happy to douse again.

Desmond Cheung is a PhD student in the field of Chinese History at UBC. He enjoys the finer things in life.