Hunan cuisine, also known as Xiang cuisine is known for being spicy. The comparison that comes to mind would be with Szechuan food which is also reputed for their heat. The chillis/peppers and their application onto dishes from these regions work differently from what I understand. The former is suppose to pack more direct heat while Szechuan cuisine which is famously associated with the mala element is more nuanced.
Hunan Cuisine Restaurant (7/8/9 Mosque Street, tel : +65 6225 5968) obviously serves Hunan food. By the way, the location is right where the old Teochew institution Lee Kui used to be
We had a pork tripe stir fried with garlic shoots and chillis. Both the red and yellow variety. We had opted for the least spicy option (小辣) but it was still quite a bit of heat to handle. To their credit, there was a nice umami with the dish that made it very addictive even with the heat. Sweat inducing heat that is. The chilli, garlic shoots and strips of pig stomach formed a medley of textures. Awesome dish to be had with white rice.
And we had dumplings. These were rather ordinary. I had the impression that Chinese dumplings had thick skins but these hadn't. There was supposed to be vegetables in them but I could only taste pork.
That's stir fried green peas with dried pickled mustard (梅干菜) and chilli. The flavours were unexpectedly much better than I had imagined. There was some aroma coming from the peas, a nice aromatic saltiness from the mustard and heat from the chilli.
The restaurant has double boiled mutton soup. We ordered it sans ginger and cilantro/coriander because I wasn't about to let them ruin the flavours.
The heated pot of soup was a little milky, peppery and just a little bit herbal. Bolstered with bit of heat from slices of chilli, cloves of garlic, some meat and gelatinous sheets (凉粉?) which had soaked up the broth. We were also getting that mutton flavour in the broth so this was nice.
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