Hunan Taste – Catonsville, MD

Baltimore City still lacks decent Chinese food.  (Sorry, Zhong Shan, you still need a lot of work.)  But it seems like Catonsville has a solution to this dearth of real, authentic, I can take my mom to this place and she won’t hate it, Chinese.  It’s called Hunan Taste and it’s next to our favorite Sunday hangout place– the HMart in Catonsville.

The restaurant is in a strip mall, but it’s possibly the best located strip mall location for an authentic Chinese food experience.  With hundreds of hungry Chinese families going to the HMart on a daily basis, it is working by word of mouth through the Chinese community as a place to get real Hunan cuisine– “dry” cooked with fresh chili peppers and garlic being the essence of the dish.  It’s also got a wide range of dishes for large parties:  there are the American dishes of General Tso’s to the REALLY authentic dishes that my grandma makes because it’s hard to find, like the goose intestines, soft shelled turtle, hot pot, or fermented soybeans with chilis.  (Think stinky tofu, but not tofu.)  And it’s definitely trying to get those large parties in, with a fabulous wooden carving in the entry, a secluded back room with karaoke, and a polished but definitely Chinese decor that blends the Last Emperor with the Red Maple– posh, clean, but hinting of the Old World.  Jonathan Gold would hate this place, but my mom and I loved sitting there, calmly eating our dishes and trying to not get too excited.  Our food was great, fantastic, and dare I say it… damn good authentic Hunan cuisine.

We ordered the following:

Chicken Bumkin appetizer, which was chopped chicken with bone in, dry sauteed with black beans, hot chili peppers, garlic, and green onions.  There was no sauce to this dish, just tons of flavor from the fragrant ingredients.   I highly recommend this.

Chicken Bumkin

Twice Cooked Pork Belly -  with large leaks, red chili peppers, and red cooked pork, this was exceptional, although I lamented the pork belly wasn’t cooked long enough to make the fat melt like butter in your mouth.  Still, dry sauteed, with so much flavor I can’t really complain.

Twice Cooked Pork

Sauteed Frog Hunan style – sauteed with button mushrooms, red chili peppers, green onions and garlic, this was probably one of my favorites.  The frog was perfectly cooked, but more importantly, the mushrooms were too– firm, without any sogginess, and extremely well paired with the frog as the textures were so similar and yet the flavors so different that it made a silky party in your mouth.

Frog... Ribbit

Braised Cabbage Soup – who knew there was a vegetable called “wahwah?”  My mom and I didn’t… but apparently, it’s baby Chinese cabbage, and it’s was served in a white broth that had scallions, country ham (think Virginia salt ham), little medicinal tree seeds (I can’t remember the English word for it) and (wait for it…) A WHOLE THOUSAND YEAR OLD EGG!!!!!!  Not cut up in tiny pieces, but served quartered, to give a slightly bitter, umami flavor to the delicate soup.  I nearly shit a kitten eating this– it was so delicious, so perfect, and so unexpected.

Braised Cabbage Soup

The service was polite and the management friendly, in particular the owners, a couple who franchised out the Jasmine bubble tea chains that are found in the malls in the area.  They, like myself, were tired of running to Rockville, Flushing, LA to find food for themselves and decided to open this restaurant so that they could have a place to eat near their home.   A restaurant catered to feed its own, to show off real Chinese food, and to provide it in a relaxing setting.

I can’t help but want to scream “Run, Don’t Walk to This Restaurant!!!” because it’s going to be impossible to get a table there in a few weeks.  You know, when Thanksgiving rolls around and it’s packed with the people not working at the mediocre Chinese restaurants in the area.

Hunan Taste
718 N. Rolling Road
Catonsville, MD 21228
410-788-8988

Dishes – $12-20 average, market prices for other things.

Service:  Polite and expedient.

PS– they also have sinks outside the bathroom to wash your hands in before eating.  Very asian.