We travel fairly often to China and have enjoyed the food there very much, so we decided to start hunting for Chinese restaurants in the Washington, DC area that we thought produced authentic dishes that taste like the restaurants in Beijing.\u00a0 (With the added advantage that the restaurants in DC are cleaner, and it\u2019s safe to drink the water.)\u00a0 We had several criteria for our search:<\/p>\n
1)\u00a0\u00a0 Level of Spiciness \u2013 Chinese restaurants in the United States generally tone down the level of spice and hot peppers for American palates.\u00a0 The restaurants on our list do not do so.\u00a0 There are non-spicy dishes to be found, of course, but if you order a spicy dish from these restaurants, you are guaranteed a spicy<\/strong> dish.<\/p>\n 2)\u00a0\u00a0 Authentic Dishes \u2013 there are many items that Chinese eat that sound alien or unappetizing to American tastes.\u00a0 These dishes include items such as tripe, tendon, jellyfish, and sea cucumber.\u00a0 Mind you, we don\u2019t like tripe, tendon, or sea cucumber either (I do confess that I like jellyfish), but if you\u2019re not offering those dishes, then you aren\u2019t an authentic Chinese restaurant.<\/p>\n 3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mapo tofu \u2013 this is a classic spicy dish with tofu and ground pork.\u00a0 The Beijing version has an explosion of peppercorns with each mouthful, and a restaurant had to do this dish well in order to make our list.<\/p>\n This is only the beginning of our search, but we\u2019ve come up with three restaurants that we think fit the criteria.\u00a0 They are as follows (in order of discovery):<\/p>\n Sichuan Pavilion (1814 K St NW; 202-466-7790):\u00a0 a friend of mine who works at the World Bank introduced me to this restaurant.\u00a0 She told me it was where all of the Chinese who work at the World Bank go to eat.\u00a0 (Branching out to other cuisines is not a Chinese strength\u2014why sample other cuisines when your own is so clearly superior?)\u00a0 The restaurant is better decorated than most Chinese restaurants, and the staff is knowledgeable and competent.\u00a0 It gets very crowded at lunchtime, so make sure you go early or late if you want to avoid the lines.<\/p>\n Chalin\u2019s, formerly Charlie Chiang\u2019s (4250 Connecticut Ave NW; 202-966-1916):\u00a0 the parents of a friend of our daughter\u2019s introduced us to this restaurant.\u00a0 They formerly worked at the Chinese Embassy, which is just down the street and told us that Chalin\u2019s is a popular place for lunch for embassy employees.\u00a0 In fact, the restaurant shut down during Hu Jintao\u2019s visit so that the chef could cook for him while he was in the United States (note previous comment about branching out or the lack thereof.)\u00a0 We\u2019ve only been for dinner, and it\u2019s never been crowded.\u00a0 They have private rooms that you can reserve, which is a nice touch for large family gatherings.<\/p>\n Great Wall Szechuan House (1527 14th<\/sup> St NW; 202-797-8888):\u00a0 some Japanese friends introduced us to this restaurant.\u00a0 Mapo tofu is a favorite dish amongst the Japanese\u2014go figure.\u00a0 This is the most casual of the three restaurants (which is a pretty high (low?) bar when you\u2019re talking about Chinese restaurants). \u00a0There is limited seating, but if you live close by, takeout is very doable.\u00a0 Parking is VERY limited.\u00a0 We are seriously thinking about using a car service next time we go.\u00a0 Jim thinks the mapo tofu here is the best of the three because it is the least greasy, but the rest of us disagree.\u00a0 The twice-cooked pork here is a must order.\u00a0 Normally, it\u2019s a very ordinary dish, but at the Great Wall, they use pork belly instead of ordinary pork.\u00a0 Not to be missed!<\/p>\n We know there are more restaurants to be found, especially in Montgomery County and northern Virginia.\u00a0 I\u2019ll keep you posted on additional discoveries!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We travel fairly often to China and have enjoyed the food there very much, so we decided to start hunting for Chinese restaurants in the Washington, DC area that we thought produced authentic dishes that taste like the restaurants in Beijing.\u00a0 (With the added advantage that the restaurants in DC are cleaner, and it\u2019s safe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[25],"tags":[53,51,54,331,52,50],"class_list":["post-576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-restaurants","tag-chalins","tag-dc","tag-great-wall-szechuan-house","tag-restaurants","tag-sichuan-pavilion","tag-washington"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p23QXm-9i","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=576"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":578,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576\/revisions\/578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}