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3434 Washington Boulevard, Arlington VA 22201
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Washington Post
Written by Tim Carman
Hong Kong Palace chef builds his own empire By Tim Carman Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, April 25, 2011Jose Andres and Jeff Black, you have company in this restaurant-empire-building business. Liu Chaosheng, the Sichuan chef behind such respected operations as Hong Kong Palace and Uncle Lius Hot Pot, is officially set to open his fourth restaurant next week.Mala Tang in Arlington will be a departure from Lius bare-bones suburban eateries; the new restaurant specializing in Sichuan hot pots and street food will, for the first time in the chefs career, drop Liu in the middle of the upscale-casual dining market.Its not a knock on his other restaurants, says Tomer Molovinsky, general manager for Mala Tang. But the new place will be more upscale than his other restaurants.The cuisine isnt changing, Molovinsky adds. Its sort of about rebranding and putting a different wrapping around it and making it more accessible to the regular diner.If the Molovinsky name sounds familiar, it is. The general managers brother, Oren Molovinsky, is the managing partner of the company that owns the small Harrys Tap Room chain; he was previously the long-time general manager of Mie N Yu, where Molovinsky helped blend Asian, Middle Eastern and American cultures into something safely exotic for the conservative Georgetown market.Molovinsky and Liu met while working on the Terra Cotta Warriors project; they soon became friends and later took a trip to Shanghai and Chengdu, where they began to hatch a plan to introduce the Sichuan chef to a wider (perhaps whiter) audience. He wanted to partner with someone who had success introducing ethnic foodto an American audience, Tomer Molovinsky says of Liu and Oren Molovinskys collaboration.Tomer Molovinsky will handle the front-of-the-house operations and the promotion of Mala Tang; his brother is a partner in the business. Liu, however, is the president of the company that operates the restaurant and has final say; he is also, of course, in charge of the kitchen and the menu. Together, the partners have sunk more than $500,000 to transform the old Meis Asian Bistro space into something resembling Jinli Street in Chengdu, Lius hometown, where the streets are clogged with people looking for places to stop, indulge in various bites and chat for hours over food and beer.The decor will set the scene for the cuisine. Liu will be serving up xiao chi, otherwise known as little eats, as appetizers. Lius small plates, six hot and six cold, are based on the street eats throughout Sichuan province, including dan dan noodles, mapo tofu, green onion pancakes, spicy cold noodles, spicy dried beef and mung bean noodles.The main course will be all individual-sized hot pots, rather than the communal ones at Uncle Lius. Diners will be able to order their own custom plates of meat, seafood, mushrooms, root vegetables and other veggies to dip into the boiling hot broth, whether traditional and vegetarian-style. The broth will be served Sichuan-style, promises Molovinsky, unless otherwise requested. For the uninitiated, that means the broth will tantalize the tongue with the numbing and spicy sensations of mala cooking.But Mala Tang has a whole other side to it: The place will also feature an informal street food counter, where customers can order from a menu board of xiao chi items and quick hot pots (known as mala tang), which they can eat on the patio, bar or communal table or take away. The quick hot pots have less broth and have your chosen proteins and vegetables already mixed into them. There will be no dipping, Molovinsky says.Liu has moved his kitchen manager at Hong Kong Palace, Liu Fei, over to Mala Tang to lead the kitchen there. He has also hired a chef de cuisine from New York. Obviously, he has three other restaurants, Molovinsky says of Liu Chaosheng. He cant be here all the time.The 150-seat Mala Tang will have a soft opening on Wednesday, April 27, and then celebrate its grand opening on Monday, May 2. Welcome to the big time, Chef Liu.Parking is available in the building attached to Mala Tang
Washingtonian
Written by Todd Kliman
There are collaborations in business and art that sound fated but fail, and there are collaborations that scream of gimmickry or novelty that somehow succeed -- each partner improbably bringing out the others' strengths and minimizing his weaknesses. The very early but very delicious evidence suggests that there is more seriousness than self-consciousness to the mash-up at Mala Tang (3434 Washington Blvd., Arlington; 703-243-2381).The Arlington restaurant is a joint venture of chef and entrepreneur Liu Chaosheng, a Chengdu native whose other restaurants include Hong Kong Palace in Falls Church, China Jade in Rockville and Uncle Liu's Hot Pot in Merrifield, three of the area's most reliable destinations for Szechuan cooking. Liu has taken on two partners, the brothers Tomer and Oren Molovinsky; Oren is a managing partner of the company that owns Harry's Tap Room, and was also a manager at Mie N Yu. The challenge, here, was to Westernize the hot pot experience without sacrificing its essential character or squandering its soul. A sizeable challenge it is, since hot pot represents all that is antithetical to harried American diners -- a communal meal that proceeds with the leisureliness of afternoon tea. (Americans can't even abide the communal table.) The partners have made something of a conceptual leap in constructing the operation around the hot pot equivalent of the personal pan pizza -- individualized pots filled with a choice of broth (mild or spicy) and ignited by a flame that sets the tiny pink goji berries roiling. A smart concession to the needs of the lunch crowd, no doubt, but the effect is to turn what is typically a lively, free-for-all of an experience into something oddly discrete and controlled. It's perhaps not surprising that on this night at least, the composition of the dining room was the photo negative of that of Uncle Liu's Hot Pot, with non-Asians making up a decided majority of diners. The room itself is a photo negative, its dark wood tables, sculpted china and sumptuous paint job a bold, stylistic departure from the Merrifield hole in the wall: the clamorous hot pot restaurant as cool, modish bistro. The benefits of the partners' arrangement is immediately evident when the plates of meat, fish and veggies hit the table. On this night, I opted for pork and prawns (each ordered separately), along with enoki mushrooms and Chinese celery. The prawns were fresh and beautifully shorn of their husks, while the pork bore little relation to the tasteless, Steak 'Em-like sheets that hot pot usually means -- the meat, from locally raised pigs, was richly marbled and had the deep, resonant flavor of a heritage breed pork chop. Fantastic on its own, it was improved by a swipe through the accompanying dipping sauce -- a richly brewed, house-made soy sauce dressed up with spicy bean paste, chili peppers and and the kitchen's own barbecue sauce. The staff could stand more inculcation in the restaurant's mission. The pork needed only a few swishes in the broth to cook, but the waitress twice scolded my table for its impatience; we were to leave the meat alone for a good ten minutes, which of course would have transformed its luscious texture into something akin to boiled licorice. At one point she went so far as to cook the meat herself, after watching us fetch slices from the broth mere seconds after dunking them.Hot pot isn't the only reason to come. It might not even be the best reason. I loved a small dish of wood-ear mushrooms tossed with chili oil and flavored with chopped cilantro -- a dish that brilliantly illustrates the paradox of simple complexity. The pork dumplings -- delicately fashioned, with thin, pliant skins -- and the dan dan noodles (topped with a zesty, greaseless meat sauce) were just as good, the finest examples of these dishes I've seen in the area this year. A scallion pancake was robbed of its visual appeal by being rendered into tiny triangles, but those triangles were blessedly free of the slick of oil that sometimes builds up on the surface of some snacks after frying and nearly crunched like chips. Only a plate of lightly pickled cucumbers could be said to constitute a miss, and not by much; they tasted more of sesame oil than vinegar. ...
Washingtonian.pdf
Tyler Cowen
Written by Tyler Cowen
It is real Sichuan hot pot, excellent flavors all around, reminiscent of Uncle Lius Hot Pot (same owner), superb cold dishes and appetizers, and the best MaPo Tofu in the entire area. They've made the decor chic, the wait staff normal, and you can just walk up to a counter and get ready-to-eat Sichuan street food to your hearts content on a moments notice. I predict this will serve as a major breakthrough for real Sichuan food in northern Virginia and also in the United States.
Washington Post
Washingtonian
Tyler Cowen
chef liu
Boasting a rich and impressive culinary background, Chef Liu was apprenticed as a Master Chef in Chengdu for nine years. He later received the Special-Class 1 Chef Certificate from the Sichuan Culinary Institute of Higher Learning. Liu has founded three widely-acclaimed Washington DC area restaurants, Hong Kong Palace, China Jade, and Uncle Lius Hot Pot, where his hot and numbing mala flavored dishes have gained him masses of loyal patrons. His restaurant Hong Kong Palace earned him praise from the Washingtonian, writing that this "gem turns out dishes that sparkle and zing". He also gained acclaim from the Washington Post, who called Uncle Lius Hot Pot "healthful, delicious, and fun way to share the cooking chores". Lius China Jade Restaurant was a featured restaurant during the Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit at The National Geographic Museum in 2009-2010.This North Rockville treasure is a staple on the Washingtonians Cheap Eats list, whose dishes were described by the magazine as simply irresistible.
3434 Washington Blvd. Arlington, VA 22201
(703) 243-2381
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