Atlanta. Tasty China Sichuan, Pics

Tasty China
565 Franklin Road
Marietta GA

IMHO, the flat out best Sichuan food currently being served in the US, bar none. Extensive post with menu description (and links to Chef Chang's Washington DC run) at this link
http://www.chowhound.com/topics/show/334616

What's astounding are the chefs: Chef Peter Chang, his second--Chef Huang with 22 years experience at a major hotel in China, and Ms. Chang--who does all of Chef Chang's appetizers and cold dishes and who met her husband in 1981 at culinary school. All master chefs in the classic sense of the word.

For so long as Chef Chang and his team elect to remain here in Atlanta (after their previous peripatetic run in Washington DC area at China Star, Tempt Asian and Sichuan Boy), we are lucky indeed. Its like having Thomas Kellar cook for you from a menu of 150 items none more than $14. The only difference is that the culinary lexicon and flavor profiles are Sichuan--not Californian or French.

At lunch for ten this week, here are some of the dishes served:

Fried Shrimp and cilantro balls ringed with seeded cucumber. not on menu. heat level low-none.


Hot boiled beef. Heat level high


Green Beans With Ground Olives


Duck soup with glass noodles, shaved turnip and shitake mushroom from New Menu. heat level none


Purses of pressed tofu filled with shrimp. not on menu. heat level none


Three flavor bean curd--Dried bean curd, sticky rice, shitake mushrooms. heat level none-low


Scallion Bread (#11), aka Chinese Jewish Rye Bread


Small Fish. #51. heat level med-high


Fish and Cilantro rolls. heat level none


Pork (pork belly) With Garlic Mud


Fish and Soft (house made) Tofu. Heat Level Extreme--the hottest thing I have ever eaten.


Dry Fried Eggplant. Heat level medium.


Roasted Fish. Heat level med-high


Husband and Wife Beef and Lung


Flavor profile includes extensive and varied use of Sichuan peppercorns, cumin. Technique includes frequent 'twice frying'--wherein main component is fried, then again with flavorings such as Sichuan peppercorns, garlic, cilantro, cumin etc. Typical in The Small Fish, Dry Fried Eggplant, and many many more dishes not pictured.

Right now I'm there twice a week. How could I not be? This lunch for ten, including four or five full plates of leftovers, rang up including a 30% tip at $20 a head.

(Photo credit: Jen at The Blissful Glutton )

Wow! This looks fantastic! While in Chicago, I was a huge fan of Lao Sze Chuan (LSC) and really came to appreciate Sichuan cuisine.

If you could post the menu, I'd love to compare it with the one from LSC (online menu).
Also any chance you got the chinese names (transliterations) of the dishes you posted on?

Are there many other Chinese restaurants in the area? Just curious, when I used to visit Atlanta, from our then (pre-2000) digs in AL, we would go to the area near Buford Highway and Chamblee Tucker Rd. There were a bunch of Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants in that area, before our shopping at the multiple "Farmer's Markets"

sazerac wrote:If you could post the menu, I'd love to compare it with the one from LSC (online menu).
Also any chance you got the chinese names (transliterations) of the dishes you posted on?

I don't have a menu to post, however, at the CH link are menu descriptions and some names.

This blows away anything that is, or ever was, in the vicinity of Buford Hwy. I have never experienced Asian food cooked at this level of culinary expertise, anywhere, of any flavor or variety.

Steve Drucker wrote:This blows away anything that is, or ever was, in the vicinity of Buford Hwy. I have never experienced Asian food cooked at this level of culinary expertise, anywhere, of any flavor or variety.

I wasn't suggesting anything near Buford highway might be at the China Star level. Just wondering what that neighborhood (and so customer base) was like - hopefully the location will generate enough customers to keep this place going. (I have no idea whatsoever about Atlanta's neighborhoods or areas...)

The reason I was asking about the menu (transliterations) because the Husband and Wife dish looks a lot like foo chi fey piyen (also here)- and is listed as Sliced Beef and Maw Szechuan Style at LSC. (there no lung in it but must have been in yours)

At any rate now I want to visit Atlanta...

sazerac wrote:The reason I was asking about the menu (transliterations) because the Husband and Wife dish looks a lot like foo chi fey piyen (also here)- and is listed as Sliced Beef and Maw Szechuan Style at LSC. (there no lung in it but must have been in yours)

Does the LSC dish have cabbage or other veg component? If so, a different dish. Hard to tell from the pics...

I had a chance to go to Tasty China for lunch a few days ago, and it was excellent.

Steve had advised as follows:

Tasty China. Absolutely feasible from the airport for lunch. At eighty MPH, the average speed on the hwy, its only 15 min out of the way, each direction. Its very good now. Get the Roast Fish w/ Green Onion, Cumin Beef, Dan Dan Noodle, Appetizer Spicy Beef. Grab Dahei, the manager, his English is very ESL. Tell him you are my friend from Chicago. Speak slow. Place your order through him.

Excellent food, though we didn't quite order as above. There were only two of us, with no place to save leftovers, so we cut down the order by one. We consulted with Phuon. When we arrived about 1:30 we were the only people in the restaurant.

We did get a beef dish, but I'm not sure it was the cumin beef. served with a lot of onions, lightly sauced, and some other veggies--broccoli, peppers, maybe something else. Seemed like a fairly usual dish, but excellently prepared.

Our roast fish did not look like that above. Rather, we got basically fried seabass nuggets dressed much like the dry fried eggplant above, with green onions, chili pepper, and a hearty dose of Szechuan peppercorn. These were terrific...if only all fish nuggets were this good.

She brought us, gratis, the dry fried eggplant above, because she thought we'd like it. We did. Really an ethereal dish, with the outside perfectly crisp and the inside with all the light, airiness of eating a cloud.

My only complaint (which is hard to make since she brought it free) is that the fish and eggplant had very similar, salty, peppercorny flavor that together was a bit overwhelming.

Oh, and for an appetizer we had the dan dan noodles, which I greatly enjoyed. "Chinese spaghetti" she called it, which was a good description, with a meaty sauce and good Chinese chili oil flavor. These noodles were a nice way to start the meal.

Thanks, Steve, for the tip on this one. Anything else good in that mall? It looks promising.

Didn't take any pics, sorry. In Atlanta for a bat mitzvah and just got went to Tasty China. Holy S**T!!! I've never had those flavor combos in the life. Hot to the point of sweating but never felt any lips burning. It was more like a salty and spicy flavored party of foods I've never tasted before. We had the husband and wife which we found out it tendon and not lung. I told my wife after a few minutes what it was. She thought it was a chewy veggie and then was turned off but not before she was choosing down on it. My young son liked the fish egg roll dish. The entrees were the eggplant and the dry numbing beef. I'm just blown away.

FYI I'm a foodie, a Jew, from a few minutes outside NYC Chinatown, and frequent the Chicago Chinatown. So I think I'm a decent judge of it and thought I'd tasted authentic dishes. Not till this evening.

optionyout wrote:Didn't take any pics, sorry. In Atlanta for a bat mitzvah and just got went to Tasty China. Holy S**T!!! I've never had those flavor combos in the life. Hot to the point of sweating but never felt any lips burning. It was more like a salty and spicy flavored party of foods I've never tasted before. We had the husband and wife which we found out it tendon and not lung. I told my wife after a few minutes what it was. She thought it was a chewy veggie and then was turned off but not before she was choosing down on it. My young son liked the fish egg roll dish. The entrees were the eggplant and the dry numbing beef. I'm just blown away.

FYI I'm a foodie, a Jew, from a few minutes outside NYC Chinatown, and frequent the Chicago Chinatown. So I think I'm a decent judge of it and thought I'd tasted authentic dishes. Not till this evening.

Glad you liked TC.

While you are here in town, I strongly suggest you go to Bo Bo China. This is a long in the tooth suburban chinese restaurant recently taken over by a Sichuan chef and his wife. The food is extraordinary. Not the salt/ma la flavor bomb of Tasty China, but rather more nuanced. Credit cards: yes. BYOB, I believe. I-85 north. Exit Pleasant Hill. Right ten minutes or so...southeast corner of the intersection...

PS--If handed the normal suburban menu, ask for the 'Chengdu menu'.

Bobo China Restaurant (川外川)
3870 Lawrenceville Hwy, Lawrenceville, GA 30044
Pleasant Hill Shopping Center
(770) 564-2811 ‎

optionyout wrote:Didn't take any pics, sorry. In Atlanta for a bat mitzvah and just got went to Tasty China. Holy S**T!!! I've never had those flavor combos in the life. Hot to the point of sweating but never felt any lips burning. It was more like a salty and spicy flavored party of foods I've never tasted before. We had the husband and wife which we found out it tendon and not lung. I told my wife after a few minutes what it was. She thought it was a chewy veggie and then was turned off but not before she was choosing down on it. My young son liked the fish egg roll dish. The entrees were the eggplant and the dry numbing beef. I'm just blown away.

FYI I'm a foodie, a Jew, from a few minutes outside NYC Chinatown, and frequent the Chicago Chinatown. So I think I'm a decent judge of it and thought I'd tasted authentic dishes. Not till this evening.

BTW, Peter Chang has long since moved on from Tasty China, which was two of the finest meals I've had in my life, and certainly the best Chinese I have ever had. I like the line that I've been in Chinatowns in San Francisco, New York (LES and Flushing), but the best Chinese meal I've ever had was in Marietta, Georgia. Funny, though, that on my trip there in 2006 or 2007 I had none of the dishes as seen above; I remember scallion bubble pancakes and ma la pork belly and all sorts of other delicious things.

Chang is now splitting time between two restaurants in Virginia, I think; one in Charlottesville and another in Richmond's suburbs. He sure is a nomad, or so it seems. The Washington Post counted his travels a few months ago:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle ... aphic.html