The Ardent Gourmet
Restaurant Review: HU NAN HEEN
“Warm Prompt”
September 11, 2018
Hu Nan Heen’s reputation for food of infernal heat precedes it. You hire two doctors to evaluate you and your wife’s chances of surviving a meal there, a cardiologist (Dr. Lotsa Moola) and a psychiatrist (Dr. Mee NuttsToo).
After a battery of tests you gather in the elegant conference room of their clinic.
Dr. Moola and Dr. NuttsToo exchange glances. Is it your imagination or do they strike you as dubious?
“Your tickers can take it,” says Dr. Moola. “All those years of serious workouts have paid off. Your hearts operate at the level of an Air Force test pilot and nothing less would be adequate for this task. Mind you, I don’t recommend it though. Science has yet to grapple with the forces to which you will be subjected.”
Dr. NuttsToo shakes his head. “There are no windows in the restaurant which amounts to sensory deprivation, tantamount to torture. There is no spoken English which will further intensify your feelings of isolation. There are no napkins to be had under any circumstances which may be the greatest hazard. The menu is frightening. Here, listen to these dishes verbatim from their menu, ‘Acid Pepper Steamed Yellow Fish More Than 2 Tail Will Sell’, ‘Green Pepper Article Belly’, ‘Burn the Smelly Fish in the Pan’, ‘Braise in Soy Sauce Wuling Wild Soft-Shelled Turtle’, ‘Crystal Powder Sand Boil’, ‘Peasant a Howl of Fragrant’ (’a howl of fragrant’. Good God man, What does that mean?). And then, if this isn’t enough to unravel you, this is the only menu I have ever seen, ever, that actually has, in large red letters, a ‘Warm Prompt’.”
Dr. NuttsToo shudders and pauses to collect himself,
“A ‘Warm Prompt’. Do you comprehend? Up until now I’ve only seen this hinted at in textbooks, not in real life. It indicates food heat at the level of a crematorium. You could well be instantly turned to ash. Do you have a death wish?”
“No, Doctor, no death wish,” you say. You are a serious foodie and will not be deterred by…
“Your wife?” says your wife.
“No, not even you can stop me.”
Heavy sigh. Eye roll.
“So be it,” say the doctors. “Please sign this form absolving us of all responsibility.”
“You too, Mrs. Greenberg. God between you and evil. Oh, and please pay on your way out. We may never have another chance to collect.” They hurriedly leave.
Up and up in a narrow elevator in Causeway Bay. Past the fish head stew simmering on an induction burner next to the cash register. To a table in back which sits beneath a 1950s style cardboard Santa and one lone snowflake, though it’s nowhere near Christmas, stapled to the wall. Santa, of course, is a saint and a calm pervades you. All will be well, for Santa is your shield and sword. And the snowflake, what does it mean? Obviously that you should chill. And you do.
No food, and then it comes rapidly, mainly in bowls, like machine gun bullets. Out of a sense of self-preservation you have avoided some of the more outré dishes highlighted by the doctors. There is still much to choose from.
Simmer Bamboo Shoots Pork: long shards of fresh bamboo shoot with bits of pork sauced in what might well be stock. Such an intensity of bamboo shoot flavor, a flavor you’ve only had hints of before, usually from canned bamboo shoots sprinkled in dishes for texture. Deeply satisfying. Wonderful. Untinged by heat.
Simmer Bamboo Shoots Pork
Dried Turnip Fried Marinated Meat: Unhinged by heat. Delicious dried turnip (one of the great Chinese culinary contributions to the planet), chewy almost, with whole garlic cloves, a funeral pyre of chopped fresh peppers, and fatty bacon to make a cardiologist giddyup. It is terrific, but the lack of napkins rears its ugly head as your natural fire-extinguisher system activates. Tsing Tao helps.
Dried Turnip Fried Marinated Meat
Tea Oil Steamed Salted Beef: dried smoked beef, almost like bresaola, sliced thin and tossed with no shortage of whole garlic cloves, a moderate snowfall of sliced hot peppers, and scallions. The meat is salty, tender, moist (even though it’s dried) and intensely flavorful. The heat is high, but below the level of conflagration. Though the peppers are hot, they provide distinct, delightful flavor as well. As for “tea oil,” (“an oil resembling olive oil obtained from the seeds of the sasanqua and related plants”) no doubt it’s there, but you can’t detect it. Yet, it’s comforting to think they nonchalantly use such an interesting ingredient, like EVOO to Italians. This restaurant doesn’t mess around.
Tea Oil Steamed Salted Beef
Bamboo Fragrance Maotai-flavor Duck: An entire duck that has been lacquered in a sweet-ish sauce based on Maotai (a Chinese liquor) dried until the meat is like jerky, and roasted until the skin is crisp, then cut into sections. You have never eaten duck like this before, condensed in flavor and texture, but still moist like the Salted Beef, with delicious skin. It will surely be a repertoire item for future visits.
Mao Tai Duck
Hunan Article Sweet Potato: Sweet potato noodles are one of the great culinary advancements of humankind. They are bland, chewy, the perfect underlayment to all kinds of sauces, vegetables, and meats. Here they are served, confetti’d with peppers but flavorless, quite a surprise given the brashness of all the other food. Perhaps, like rice, it’s meant to be mixed with the other food.
Hunan Glutinous Rice Bags: looking like a male body part too delicate to mention in a food review that might be read by the young, innocent, and impressionable, these are exactly what they claim to be. Your wife loves them, but you don’t.
Hunan Glutinous Rice Bags
Cucumber Salad: the best version of this salad you’ve ever had. They nailed it!
Sugar Oil Baba: Soft rice-cakes shaped like dried apricots, glutinous, sticky, hot, immersed in a caramel sauce. You love them. Inexplicably your sweet-tooth wife doesn’t which is a shame because they would be such a term of endearment (“come to me my Sugar Oil Baba”). They’d be fabulous served with vanilla Haagen Daaz, but you know this can never be. If a translator somehow managed to convey “vanilla Haagen Daaz” so your restaurateurs grasped your meaning, they’d kick you out for apostasy.
Sugar Oil Baba
A free bowl of soup: You appreciate it. How kind. A dessert you think, apparently sweetened pea soup or the like. Both you and your wife agree it is vile. Neither of you eats it and you are shrilly admonished by your waitress in Chinese. When she departs you empty out your bowls beneath the remnants of other dishes like children hiding their brussels at the kitchen table.
The food is not to be confused with Szechuan. While both are spicy hot, Hunan tends to be hotter and based on fresh, not dried peppers. The meats are often dried, salted, smoked, which intensifies their flavor. Oil is not eschewed. This is the food of Mao which surely provides some insight into his searing politics.
Service is inattentive and borders on surly. But, after all, you don’t go to a restaurant like this for service. If need be, at a place like this you’d fetch the dishes from the kitchen yourself elbowing aside other customers as you do so.
There are no windows. No English. No napkins. No knowing if you will survive. But, if you do, it is one of the most flavorful restaurants in Hong Kong, an unheralded champion of authentic cuisine. It’s cheap.
If you are truly a foodie, Hu Nan Heen is the nosebag for you. The place was packed. People-in-the-know -- as far as you could tell not a single other expat -- know. This is where chefs would eat if they knew to eat here. Do so.
May Santa be your shield and sword.
Your shield and sword, Santa!
Rating (on a scale of 0 to 5)
Food: 4
Ambiance: 0
Service: 0
Overall Value: 5
HU NAN HEEN
Circle Plaza, 4/F, 499 Hennessy Rd, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong
You called to make reservations, but were unable to find anyone who spoke English and they hung up on you (which, in its blunt candor, is part of the charm of the place). If you want their food, show up and take your chances. If you don’t want their food, go jump in a lake.