Chengdu Taste

101 Best restaurants of Los Angeles

@latimes

"#94 Six years after chef Tony Xu opened the first location of Chengdu Taste on Valley Boulevard, it remains a key barometer for Sichuan cooking in the San Gabriel Valley. The menu is a rich cache of greatest hits (dan dan noodles) and deep cuts (spicy, deep-fried bullfrog); peppercorns steadily throb in plate after plate. There are a number of essential dishes: mung bean noodles with fresh and pickled chiles; ultra-tender slips of boiled beef in a lava-red chile broth; sauteed eggplant stewed in a rich garlic sauce. Flavors are layered and seemingly bottomless. Toothpick lamb is a plate of fried cubed lamb encrusted with cumin and peppers, skewered onto toothpicks — a signature Xu dish, it’s reliably excellent. Don’t miss the boiled fish with green peppers, a white fish broth spiced with vast sums of sliced fresh green chiles. Jonathan Gold once wrote that eating it was like “a mysteriously pleasurable punch to the mouth.” The description is as timeless as the dish. No alcohol. Credit cards accepted. Street parking."

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