Kat's 9 Lives

Wow this place is SPICY! Even Ms. Lin who claims to be able to eat and love really spicy things caved! I almost beat her! lol After Mon Land Hot Pot City, Ms. Lin and I went to Chung King Restaurant for our spicy fix. We have been going to YunChuan Garden every time she is in town that it's time for a change. Ms. Lin looked up this place on San Gabriel for our "midnight snack". lol
They have a cold dish bar just like YunChuan Garden with slightly different choices. They offer 3 choices for $5.95, which is more expensive than YunChuan Garden. Immediately we chose Fu Chi Fei Pian. We debated on what to choose for the other 2 and came to an agreement on the Spicy Beef and Smoked Chicken. The Fu Chi Fei Pian were not too bad, but we both unanimously agreed that the one at YunChuan Garden was much better. These were just spicy and not really any other delectable flavor. The spicy beef was like jerky and extremely chewy. The flavor was spicy but decent.
What I really enjoyed was the Smoked Chicken. I thought it was extremely flavorful and tasty. Here is the trick... Everything else is SUPER SPICY, so what I did was eat something spicy and counter-balanced it with some yummy smoked chicken! Ms. Lin started to copy me a little. We really only ate the smoked chicken and I wanted another plate so we just got another plate of only smoked chicken. They actually gave a pretty decent amount of chicken for the 3 item plate of $5.95. If not for anything else, I'd come back for the chicken. ^_^
I want to end on a good note, so I am going to talk about what was really bad here. My favorite dish at YunChuan Garden is the Wontons in Hot Chili Oil so I had to order it here that day. BLECH! You know what, I think I am starting to understand something... this tastes a little like the chili sauce I had at Taste of Asia. It's the chili oil they use! I am just not a huge fan and Ms. Lin didn't like it all either. There is this awkward taste to it. There wasn't that much flavoring in the sauce at the bottom either. It tastes a little too sour as if it's going bad. There is just too much chili oil and no flavored sauce to make the wontons taste good. As for the wontons itself. They had a decent flavor, not too powerful/flavorful but enough.
The dish that really got me was the Pig Intestines with Hot Pepper! Lets just say everything here is SPICY! It's hard finding something that is not spicy. I think the smoked chicken was one of those rare items. =P Okay here is the deal with this dish... it smells awesome and the portion is pretty generous. The intestines are fried to heck and crispy. When you first take a bite of the intestines you feel the flavor emanating in your mouth and juices flowing out. You feel wonderfully delighted. A few minutes later... WHOA! The spiciness kicks in and you are on fire, but a good burn! ^_^ So this is how good it was... I normally don't like to eat too spicy and I am suppose to be weaker in spicy foods since I am not trained like Ms. Lin... I continued to eat and eat. One bite of the intestines and then some smoked chicken and so forth. Soon I could take many bites without chicken. I thought Ms. LIn was strong but I was doing better than her! ^_^ She needs to retrain herself! TSK TSK lol
All in all the food had it's ups and downs. I would think about coming back for the smoked chicken and the spicy intestines... but the other dishes were a big let down... especially the wontons. The service was not that good. It's your typical Chinese join so what do you expect. What annoyed me was that we sat right by the cold dish bar and I had to keep asking them for a cup of water. It took them forever to bring one and then forever to fill the cup. They also missed one of our orders, the wontons. I wished we didn't get it now! lol Hindsight is 20/20.

Chung King Restaurant