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Hunan Taste, A Second Location of a Catonsville Hunan Restaurant on Fairfax Blvd. in Fairfax - Closed


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On 11/12/2009 at 0:07 AM, 1000yregg said:

Last month, a new Chinese restaurant opened in Catonsville in the same shopping center as H Mart called Hunan Taste.

 

On 3/20/2013 at 11:57 AM, Sthitch said:

Second location coming to 10120 Fairfax Blvd. in Fairfax (website says it should have opened at the end of January).

 

Well, Tyler Cowen reviewed it today, so I'm guessing it's open. Looks like we need a new topic...and a group of NoVA folks to come with me so I can order many dishes. :)

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Steve and I are going for lunch tomorrow (Fri, Dec. 5) at 11:30.  Feel free to join, just shoot me a PM.

Wish I could! Sadly I don't think I can make the trip from Greenbelt and back in an hour.

Then again, I did watch "The Cannonball Run" recently...

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Matt, I am in, as long as it is accessible.  Walking in a cast using a cane.  Most modern places in Fairfax are accessible.

It's not very far from my house.  I like that the Chinese menu is in English, with photographs of the dishes.  Whoever wrote the menu has an excellent command of English.

As Tyler Cowen says, the best ethnic food is in strip malls.  Go as soon as they open, before they realize how much money they are losing by using the best ingredients and dumb it all down.

Unfortunately, that area in Fairfax is Where Restaurants Go to Die.

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I actually drive by that strip mall a couple times a month as I head to the Super H-Mart. I'd seen the signs for Hunan Taste but it never looked open.

Oh, and to Steve, Ericandblueboy and others that went, my turkey sandwich lunch and I are quite jealous.

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Three of us went there last night.  Waiter handed us three American menus and one Chinese menu.  I asked for a couple more Chinese menus.  My husband and I ordered from the Chinese menu, brother-in-law from the American menu.

When we came in, the tables were mostly full, and we were the only non-Asians in the room, which I thought was a good sign.  The decor is somewhat formal, red walls, tall carved murals, crystal chandeliers, heavy carved wooden chairs, white tablecloths.  I ordered the Mao braised pork, Chinese cabbage, bitter melon, and from the American menu, hot an sour soup.  Husband ordered cumin lamb, brother-in-law, twice cooked pork.

I was tempted by some of the more adventurous items, such as pigs blood, but wanted to stick with the basics.  The Mao pork was the best version I've had in a restaurant, although I like the way I cook it at home, from Fuchsia Dunlop, better.  My husband said the cumin lamb was not very spicy.  Well, it's Hunan, not Sichuan!  I really liked the bitter melon, tender and garlicky and gingery.  Bitter melon is a dish you better really like bitter to eat.  I would have used more fermented black beans.

We will go back, and I want to eat more adventurously there, but I am thinking that the main virtue is that it's probably the best restaurant in close driving range to home, which is, unfortunately, faint praise.  Towards the end a couple of tables filled up with Anglos, but they must have lived nearby because they only ordered from the American menu.  The Chinese menu is translated in very good English, only a couple of typos, and almost everything has a photograph of the dish.  I want to try some of the special order "nourishing diet" dishes, which appear to be medicinal soups, probably the steamed chicken with red dates, longan and tremella, or maybe steamed baby pigeon with ginseng, but probably not the ginseng pizzle soup.

The wait staff was swift and competent, and the waiter brought a printed paper summary of our order for our review before submitting it.  The food came quickly, empty dishes were taken away quickly, water glasses were refilled.  Oh, right, water.  No beer!

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I don't have a detailed food review, but I did go once. We didn't order much, just a taster, including one of the "casseroles" which seems like some version of a hot pot. It was tasty, not spicy, but honestly I don't have a handle of this place. it's pricey, we weren't super hungry, lady friend and I were on the way home from Staunton and I had wanted to check it out. So, this is more of a "structural" review.

I want to say that I found the Chinese menu very intimidating. There are so many items, a lot of offal/blood/weird stuff, and though it is well translated, there are no descriptions. I'm not meaning to say I wouldn't go back and be adventurous, just saying that even though I feel like I've made some breakthroughs at HKP and Joe's and a few other Chinese places, this place seems much more difficult.

The service was much, much, much better than either of the 4 places that I've gone to in the DC area (HKP, Jin River, Joe's, Panda Gourmet), and much more similar to a Thai or Indian place. Very friendly, courteous, able to explain some stuff. Not typical for these types of restaurants (at least, locally). The ambiance is also much nicer. However, with this comes a cost - you can be in and out of HKP for $80 for 4 people and have leftovers. Here, this is unlikely - probably closer to $120. Maybe they are using better ingredients. Maybe it's technically more difficult to make the dishes. Maybe the rent is higher. I don't know.

My physicist frequents the one in Catonsville and likes it, but he said that he tended to go to a different restaurant in HoCo, b/c of the price difference.

I think I'll wait for reviews to pile up and so I can figure out what to order next time, with a bigger group.

Oh, and no beer/wine.

S

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Went there for Fathers Day for lunch and this was the first time my family got to experience this restaurant. Family is from Taiwan, and my father was pretty impressed by the food, menu, and decor. Said the restaurant is one of the few in Northern VA that can compete with highly regarded Chinese restaurants that are mostly in the Rockville area. We had 6-7 dishes, but ordered mostly from the Chinese menu. The Mapo Tofu was excellent, and one of the better versions I've had. Tofu was silky and we asked them to lower the heat on it since we had some children dining at the table with us. Beef on skewer was delicious, and had a nice texture to it. Kung Pao Chicken.. slightly spicy with sweet notes in the water chestnuts.  Green beans w/pork  - not greasy, tender green beans cooked very well.

I think the lunch was a hit with the family, and I know we will go back to try the hot pot and some other items from the chinese menu especially their whole fish specialties. The table next to us did order the soft shell turtle soup...

Very happy to have given it a try, and will be back for more!

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On 1.9.2016 at 8:22 PM, goodeats said:

Well, something happened since the last post above, as a "for lease" sign is in the window for the Fairfax location. I have no idea if the original location survived...

This location of Catonsville-Based Hunan Taste (that was a rhyme) made Northern Virginia Magazine's Top 50 Restaurants last November:

Screenshot 2016-09-02 at 03.26.21.png

There's also an unrelated Hunan Taste in Springfield - in Saratoga Shopping Center - which is still very much open (their website is here).

In the News of the Weird, both surviving restaurants - completely unrelated to each other - in Springfield and Catonsville - are both on *Rolling Road* (see how easy it is to wrap your brain around *that* one at 3:45 AM).

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