Chung King: The Allure of the Chile Pepper - It's Like a Bad Man

Three of the many options for cold appetizer plate - spicy cabbage, pig's oreilles (how good is your French?), and spicy shredded beef:

After frolicking in the Arroyo with the Roving Archers, the very tall and exceedingly muscular Monsieur de... and I decided to grab some lunch at Chung King in order to keep our endorphine high going (it's the allure of the chile pepper Dear Reader!)

Explain the allure of the chile pepper? It's spicy, painful, can be harmful to you, yet you keep coming back for more and you crave it, you know, kind of like a bad man.


Above is the diced chicken with the pickled schezuan chile pepper. Not only are there pickled chile peppers in there but fresh chile peppers as well. I dream about this dish almost daily! Along with the peppers there are pieces of shaved garlic and really wonderful baby bamboo shoots. My only complaint is that the cook left on a lot of the skin and fat on the chicken and if it were fried and said fatty stuff was crunchy this would not be a problem but the fat and skin stayed soft so the dish was very rich.

Above is a picture of the blandest dish in the LA County area if not all of California. Like the noblesse use lemon sorbet to cleanse their palate between courses I have to use "puffed" rice with sliced chicken to cleanse mine (there is only so much the tea and Coke can do.) This is my ultimate comfort food, it is so soothing at the restaurant but when I take home the leftovers and eat this dish the next day I have to add chile oil or sauce to it (In the background you can see the fried ribs with prickly ash and salt. At the same time this is blazingly hot, the prickly ash numbs your mouth so you get a very interesting taste sensation.)

Chung King
1000 S. San Gabriel Blvd.
San Gabriel, CA 91776

Pasadena Roving Archers
www.rovingarchers.com