Lovers of Chinese food who want to be more adventurous than their local takeout place will find many unusual dishes at Chef Jiang, which soft-opened on Nov. 10 at 1600 South East Road in Farmington.
The dishes may be new to Americans, that is, who are accustomed to Americanized Chinese food. Chef Jiang’s food is authentic Chinese. In an affirmation that Chef Jiang is doing it right, 90 percent of the customers so far have been Chinese, said the restaurant’s manager, Wei Lin.
“The only way to know if you like it is to try it,” Lin said of the restaurant’s Szechaun-Hunan cuisine.
Alongside Chef Jiang’s more familiar offerings are two dishes made with frog; appetizers of beef tendon, tripe, jellyfish, pig ears and chicken gizzard; a casserole of monopteros albus eel; main dishes of squid and escargot; and fish head in a spicy red pepper sauce.
Then there’s the wonderfully named “Fire Palace Stinky Tofu.” “Have you ever heard of a durian? It’s a fruit that smells terrible but tastes really good. Stinky Tofu is like that. It smells awful, but it’s delicious,” Lin said. The dish gets its pungent aroma, and its flavor, from long fermentation in brine.
Another tofu dish, Chiba Tofu, is extremely firm, thin-sliced and smoky, brought to the table still cooking in a griddle atop a brazier. Other griddle dishes are beef, pork, frog, chicken, mushroom and fish.
Tilapia and sea bass are delivered whole-body, draped across a rectangular chafing dish, smothered in a spicy sauce. Tilapia is also served in an aromatic broth with pickled vegetables, or in a chili oil marinade.
The xiaolongbao dumplings — made with chicken, pork or crab — come out of the dough with a copious squirt of spicy sauce.
Johnson Jiang of West Hartford is the chef at the new restaurant. He grew up in Hunan, where he went to culinary school.
Chef Jiang, at 1600 South East Road in Farmington, is open 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Monday to Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday. chefjiang.com.
Susan Dunne can be reached at sdunne@courant.com.
