Yang Jiaz Huang

> Location : Shunde, Guangdong, Mainland China
> Cuisine : Shunde style lamb
> Tel. # : (86) 0757-22661191
> Website : N/A

Specialty restaurants are always quite interesting. They are designed to use a certain type of ingredients throughout every dish. A good example would be The Stinking Rose located in Beverly Hills, California. Pretty much every dish in this restaurant is emphasized with garlic even in its ice cream! So what is Yang Jiaz Huang's specialty? Lamb! In Shun De, there are a few of these seasonal restaurants that only serves lamb dishes. Seasonal as of in they open starting around mid September to early October because this is when lamb is fresh into the market. Yang Jiaz Huang is the first to open this season so I had to give it a try!

Yang Jiaz Huang is a big place with many private seating rooms. In each room, the center of the table has a portable stove to place a pot for hot potting your lamb and other dishes. For each individual, two small dipping sauces are given. The first comes with fermented bean curd, chili sauce and about a few teaspoons of oil. You need to mix it together in order to use it. The second sauce is vinegar base with green onions, sesame oil and cilantro. Both sauces are used according to your own preferences but usually the vinegar base one is for dishes that lack sauces like an eastern mountain lamb dish I will be talking about later.

The first thing to start off with is lamb hotpot style. Decent quality of lamb. Using the fermented bean curd sauce is best with this dish. The taste is define but is best if you rely on the bean curd sauce. Since it is hotpot after all, a lot of adding and subtracting from the hot is occurring, so dip accordingly. Quality wise, according to my father who is experienced with eating these lamb specialty restaurants here in Shun De, it is decent but not the best. There are various types of vegetables you get to choose from to hotpot, ranging from lettuce to chinese squash to many others. All were very fresh and nothing to complain about. It is always nice to order some vegetables to balance the meal since there is so much meat!

The next dish is a lettuce base, marinaded lamb with green onions and crushed peanuts on top. Texture wise, it was slightly sticky. It held a slightly define taste and not too salty. It was decent overall and goes well with the bean curd sauce again. What do Simon mean by define? Again let me explain what I mean by define if you haven't read my other reviews before. When I say define, that means throughout the first bite up to swallowing, you can savor a unique taste or combination of tastes. So, basically not something that you eat and cannot hold a memory in your head. Also, depending on the cuisine, this word can vary.

Last by not least, I want to share with you my favorite dish. In literal translation, this dish is called eastern mountain lamb. From the name, you can easily guess that it is lamb from the eastern mountains in China. The dish is served pretty much steamed (but left out to cool a bit first) but alone without sauce, it held a definite define taste of lamb which indicates its freshness. This dish in particular goes well with the vinegar base sauce because of the lack of sauce when it is cooked. The concept here is very much like "lo shui" dishes using a vinegar base sauce for dipping. Traditionally, a lot of little sauce or no sauce cold Chinese dishes that requires dipping goes well with vinegar base sauces because vinegar heightens the taste of the core ingredients of the dish. In our case, the lamb. Therefore, this is a delicate lamb experience where the prime activity is not to savor a dish's sauce + core ingredient + extra ingredients but to taste one core ingredient only, heighten through vinegar, and lamb meat sensation in all its glory!

A dish like the above is a true example of how eaters these days are swayed away from the quality, freshness and taste of a dishes core ingredient. Through fancy sauces and decorations, it covers up the quality of the meat (for example) and make us forget what is important. A true Chinese food fanatic would consider freshness of the core ingredients of the dish according to the ingredient's respective seasonal growth and regional freshness. Say for example, taro and lamb is a seasonal product and does very well starting around September and chicken in Hong Kong aren't as tasty and fresh compared to Mainland China.

Anyways, getting back on track, Yang Jiaz Huang is a overall decent place. Being the earliest to open out of all the lamb specialty restaurants in Shun De, the quality of the lamb would certainly be questionable. But after experiencing it, I can truly say it is acceptable although there is better according to what people tell me. That shouldn't discount this place as time rolls through. The quality of lamb could definitely get better as this fall/winter season rolls through. So give it a try for yourself!

< 3 1/2 out of 5 >

Jin Yan Zhou

> Location : Shunde, Guangdong, Mainland China
> Cuisine : Shunde (Chinese)
> Tel. # : (86) 0757-2226-1111
> Website : N/A

In Shunde, Guangdong, the people there are all about food and they aren't kidding at all! To me, about 85% of the places I've been to have served at least a few great dishes if not all. Basically, a taste that will imprint a strong positive memory into your head just about everytime. Of course, nothing is perfect like today I went to a Chinese restaurant within Century Hotel of Shun De that served the worst dim sum and noodles I have ever ate. Not only Shun De, I'll admit, out of everything I've review so far, this is the worst ever so obviously there isn't a review of this place, haha. On the upside, the hotel and garden is really beautiful indeed.

Going back to the main topic, so this review must be one of the restaurants contributing to the 85% of the good places I've been to right?? Of course! This place is call Jin Yan Zhou. The restaurant is fairly big with private rooms also like most Mainland Chinese restaurants. From various Shun De cuisine to some dim sum selections (afternoon to dinner hours but more in the morning) such as pan fried turnip cake, Jin Yan Zhou has a wide range of selections. For my outing, I went with some unique choices...

Starting off with some dim sum, there's the pan fried taro strips wrapped in rice flour with sesame. American is to potato and Chinese is to taro, taro is an important aspect to chinese cuisine. It is quite popular these days to get pan fried taro in strips. The difference to me is that with strips, the taro is more fried because of the holes therefore the eating sensation is like strip by strip instead of a whole chunk of taro. Also, I think you get a better flavor out of the taro from a whole chunk pan fried instead of in strips. Nevertheless, it is still quite good along with the sweetness of the sesame rice flour wrapped around the edges served with hot sauce. The sesame rice flour is a good creative idea for this dim sum when usually it's just plain taro strips pan fried.

The next dish is braised lamb pot. Besides lamb, the visable ingredients are green onions, ginger, garlic and lettuce base. Since lamb/goat season is about here, ordering lamb is a good idea because most likely it'll be fresh instead of frozen for sometime. The lamb is fairly tender and holds a good lamb flavor to it. It has that distinct flavor from beef. So if you know this well, next time you eat lamb and you taste little or not at all, you know your lamb has been frozen for quite sometime. Overall, a passing dish.

Next up, pan fried fish mouth. This is one of my favorite dish in this review. Basically, most of the portions around the head of the fish is pan fried along with ginger, green onion, red pepper, green pepper and garlic. The bone is still attached to the meat but it's not hard to eat compared to the body because the head bones are big and wide. The fried texture is a nice touch to the dish both looks and taste. Not a lot of meat due to the area of the dish, but tasty and well presented. Order two if you need more! Must order if you go to this place!

Another one of my favorite dishes from this place is the dried silver dish string beans with green onions, dried shrimps, garlic, and dried marinaded pork strips. One of the highlights of this restaurant, this dish's main taste is from the dried silver fish. The taste of the sauce base is right from it also. Although they are merely complements to the string beans, they are important complements helping heighten the experience of the string beans. Kind of like, different types of pickles and congee. The green beans were very fresh and the taste of the sauce from the dried silver fish is this unique fishy, kind of sweet flavor. One of those flavors that burns a mark into your brain! A must order like the above dish!

Second to last we have steam tofu with ground pork ontop. Other ingredients are green onions, red pepper strips and cilantro mostly for garnish. With a soy sauce base, the tofu is merely steamed depending on the soy sauce and the ground pork as flavoring. A very simple dish yet tastes very well. The ground pork (visibly, starch is added for looks and tenderness) and soy sauce is a good complement to the tofu. A lighter dish yet well done!

Lastly, we have a bird dish. Bird? No, we're not talking about ducks or goose or chickens but we're talking about those little birds kind of like the ones chinese people put in those little cages. The dish contains quite a few of them inside. I say about 10 to 15 birds. What type of bird I am not sure but other ingredients are green onion, regular onion, ginger, green and red pepper. This is one of those dishes that require some delicate eating manners. Since the bird is so small, There's more bones than meat. So detaching the meat will be a chore for most. The dish is pretty tasty base on the sauce its cooked in but there isn't much meat to go around and the meat itself isn't too flavorful. There isn't a strong meat taste. What do I mean by that? Kind of like, chicken meat has a unique flavor, beef has a unique flavor, fish has that fishy flavor and so on. Even if you don't know what a certain type of animal taste like, there will always be some distinct flavor to it with every bite and usually never a non-indentifiable taste. If you can't indentify anything, then like always, you can safely conclude it's not fresh/frozen. Overall, nice garnishes with contrast, nice sauce that was cooked in just the bird meat lacks its own distinct flavor to it. When it comes to food in Shun De, even sauce is not going to help you get away from people thinking negatively about the dish. Overall, a passing dish.

In the end, Jin Yan Zhou is a great Shunde restaurant. Even their dim sum (during morning and noon time) are great with various selections, from oily sticks to steamed beef balls. I enjoy their congee especially. They have a lot of different types of congee to choose from including the infamous lean meat with duck egg congee which is really good! Anyways...

< 4 out of 5 >