Kat's 9 Lives

So upsetting! Upon someone's recommendation I was excited to try this new place that opened up in El Toro. It's called Taste of Asia and it's suppose to be a very spicy place like YunChuan Garden, but it can NOT hold a candle to it. YunChuan Garden is 10 million times better and the prices are much more reasonable! We went late in the afternoon today so it wasn't as crowded, but there were still some people there. It's a very small place in a strip mall. Since it's new, it is actually very clean. The decor is very vibrant and colorful with a modern twist. It almost doesn't feel like a Chinese restaurant! lol Note: The pictures look a lot better than how the food tastes.
The servers seemed very friendly, but the guy behind the counter... probably the owner... was a little bit impatient. If you walk up to the counter you can get the cold side dishes. They are 3 for $5.50 but we only got the Fu Chi Fei Pian that I love at YunChuan Garden. Here they have a lot less choices in side dishes so we opted in only getting one item. Note: The portions for the side dishes are a LOT smaller than the ones you get at YunChuan Garden. Now onto the taste... WAY TOO SPICY! It's nowhere as good as YunChuan Garden! There wasn't much flavor except spiciness. It should never be too overpowering that you taste nothing else. My Aunt who loves spicy and can take it ate the dish said that she tasted almost nothing. It was too bland for her and it needed more salt. One of my favorite favorite things at YunChuan Garden is their Wontons in Hot Chili Sauce. So of course I had to try that here for myself. Boy was I wrong! This place missed the mark by far! It was flavorless and not spicy at all. The wontons were not flavorful and had an extreme ginger flavor, but nothing else. It was too one-dimensional. They need to beg for the secret recipe from YunChuan Garden. If they could make dishes or sauces like them, their business would be booming! I would also be here almost every other day to get my daily fix.
Since I read some reviews online about their lamb dishes, I decided to get the Mongolian Lamb. After trying the Fu Chi Fei Pian, we realized that their spicy dishes would be way too spicy for us so we were trying to find a dish that's not spicy. Believe it or not, it was actually very hard to find one! They do have some normal Americanized dishes, but we wanted real Chinese food. This dish was actually very good and the portion was not bad. Since there are a lot of onions, it becomes a very sweet, flavorful, and aromatic dish. This ended up being the only dish we actually ate.
Unfortunately I didn't think what we ordered was enough so we added one extra dish. I ordered the Fish Fillet with Garlic and Brown Sauce. The portion was actually very generous, but I must say... BLECH! It had no flavor at all! I wish there was salt by the table to add into the dish. If you know me, I normally don't like to add extra flavor to most dishes... but this one was bland and flavorless. I was hopping that there would be a strong garlic flavor because I love garlic and fish. How could I go wrong? Apparently VERY WRONG.

All in all I will NOT be back. I don't even care if Ms. Lin comes back and wants to try. I am NOT going again. This place has no lunch specials or any deals. It's pretty pricey and the food is not that good. Why would I want to come back? We basically ate NOTHING today. I only managed to eat a little of everything, but that was it. The only dish we finished was the lamb. My Mom eats almost EVERYTHING, but she didn't even want to eat anything else here. What does that tell you when a woman who consumes almost any and everything refuses to eat it?