Review: At Xiang La Hui, the cooking is as complex as it is spicy
Mao xue wang — a spicy stew with origins in Chongqing, southwestern China’s megacity — always contains a patchwork of ingredients emphasizing varied textures. Xiang La Hui, a new Sichuan restaurant in Alhambra, serves an extravagant version.
Circling back to the stew’s broth: It hums with piercing heat, but flavors of ginger and star anise chime through with intentional clarity. Sichuan is L.A.’s ascendant regional Chinese cuisine of the decade; food writers have made a slogan out of repeating that the area’s cooking is about more than fire-hosing the taste buds with punishing Scoville heat units.Xiang La Hui’s menu epitomizes the complexities, by design.
Serrano pepper beef brings even more of a fragrant wallop. The meat steeps in a mildly fiery liquid swirling with spice: cinnamon, bay leaf, cumin, black cardamom. Du was known for his skill with this dish when he cooked at a nearby outpost of the Meizhou Dongpo chain, and it is masterful. It’s easy enough to sidestep the scattering of hot green peppers, but it’s worth experiencing the contrast between the tingle of the broth and the direct blast of fresh chile.
Cumin-scented toothpick lamb creates a similar effect. Chengdu Taste popularized the dish in Southern California when it opened in 2013. Dunlop remarks in her book that Sichuan has long been an ever-evolving culinary melting pot; toothpick lamb is a spinoff of the lamb-cumin combination favored by the Hui Muslim population that migrated from the north to Chengdu, Sichuan’s capital.
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