Hong Sichuan Family-Style Dishes, Montañeses 2113, Barrio Chino (Belgrano) – Brand new spot on the “back street” of Chinatown. We spotted it, and definitely put it on the list, but it had the look of another of these newer Chinese spots where the owners basically say… “screw it, we’re cooking for our community, we’re not going to bother to attract others”. The sign out front is only in Chinese (the upper part says the name, the lower line says “Welcome”). [Closed permanently during the pandemic]

I decided to give it a shot on my own one day, and, thankfully, the menu is translated (at least enough to figure things out), unlike some of those other spots. The owner speaks nearly flawless Spanish, so that made it even easier to talk to her about the dishes. And the food, on that first visit – dumplings and Szechuan pork belly – were excellent. I slapped it onto the next week’s outing for the Roving Ravenous Horde. Three of us ended up there, with a repeat on those two dishes, plus several more.

Two negatives, on both visits. The kitchen is really slow, and food takes awhile, plus they seem to favor cooking for the Chinese folk, particularly business folk, before everyone else, even if they came in later. And, they’re out of a lot of stuff on the menu – much of it is simply with blank prices, which turned out to be dishes they don’t have, and other stuff is simply not available (it was different on each of the two visits, so it’s more of not maintaining proper stock of ingredients than it is that they don’t do those dishes).

 

Absolutely delicious dumplings, potsticker style. Packed with flavor of pork, garlic, cabbage, and green onion. Tables have strangely alternating condiments. Every other table has a jar of hot paste and of fermented black beans, while the alternating tables have soy sauce and vinegar. Cooking is slightly inconsistent, these were the ones from the first visit, on the second visit they were far darker brown, and on all sides. 170 pesos.

 

Beautiful little fried wontons, the menu didn’t specify, but based on flavor, I’d venture that they’re filled with beef and garlic chives. 130 pesos.

 

This was an unplanned dish, due to a misunderstanding of which dish we wanted and what was available, but in the end, we were delighted that we got it. Roasted char siu pork, served cold, lightly slathered with hot chili paste. Yum. On the menu, it’s 250 pesos, but she gave it to us for 120 pesos, because she substituted it for a pork belly appetizer that we had wanted that was only 120. Nice touch to service.

 

One of their specialties are hand rolled ban-tiao noodles (they have a whole section of the menu devoted to dishes made with them) – those wide, slurpable noodles that are sort of like long Chinese pappardelle. But, they hadn’t made any, and our option for the ban-tiao dish that we wanted, with shrimp, was either “regular” noodles or rice vermicelli. It was quite good, though lacking in quantity of shrimp – especially for a 300 peso price tag. I’d try the dish again if they had those wide noodles, these just didn’t quite make the dish what we’d hoped for. Hey, if it’s one of your specialties, you outta have ’em.

 

Hui guo rou – one of my favorite Szechuan dishes – twice cooked pork belly with chilies and Szechuan peppercorns. Equally as good as my favorite (to date) version of this dish here in town from Caracól de Amor. Again some inconsistency – this photo from the first visit, packed with fresh chilies, while on the second visit, it was all dried chilies. Equally as spicy, equally as good, but… different. 380 pesos.

 

And, regular readers know my favorite Szechuan dish, Szechuan peppercorn chicken, la zi ji. Very good version of this dish – the majority of the pieces of chicken boneless, though not all of them. A little bit more breaded than most versions I’ve had of this. But great flavor, with plenty of chili and plenty of peppercorn. An interesting addition of dark roasted peanuts in the dish as well. 380 pesos.

All in all, while it might not break into my top five favorite Chinese places in the city, it’s certainly in the top ten, and easily jumps to the top of my list of favorites in Chinatown, where most of the food leans towards bland versions of Cantonese or Taiwanese food. Hong, may be the last name of the owner, but it also means “red”, which culturally is a symbol of happiness and good fortune. We felt the former, and I wish them the latter!