Surrounded by the culinary giants of Sichuan, Yunnan and Hunan, and home to diverse minority groups, Guizhou cuisine is a melting pot of flavours. Jun Qin Hua’s owner and chef, An Lijun, is of the Miao minority, and comes from Guizhou’s Kaili, a city dominated by Miao and Dong peoples. A moved to Beijing and opened up with six tables in 1996.
While the bright lights and permanently illuminated TV in the corner prevent you from being transported to the bamboo and rice-terraced hilltop villages of Guizhou, every effort is made to send you there with each dish. A keeps strong links to her home village, travelling back every autumn to select the chillies laced into dishes on the menu, and the cured pork larou.
The pork is sautéed with crunchy bamboo, fresh green garlic, leeks and those fiery chillies. Reminiscent of the Shaanxi dish liangpi, the cold Guizhou mipi rice noodles topped with deep-fried soy beans and homemade chilli oil are mouth-watering Verdict Guizhou cuisine’s power ful flavours are well represented here and fragrant, while Miao pickled vegetables– in this case, a preserved mustard root – are simultaneously salty, sour and smoky. The sweet glutinous steamed millet cake cuts through the spice of everything else and possesses a magnetic quality that pulls your chopsticks back to the sticky dish again and again. The fried rice with chopped chilli and egg, however, sounds enticing but lacks the oomph of other dishes.
The star of the show is the suantangyu, Guizhou’s most famous dish. There’s a choice of fish–in our case a whole, meaty carp– that is heated at the table in a hotpot of bubbling, sour and spicy tomato-based broth. Ladled into individual bowls with fresh coriander, spring onion, nuts and fermented tofu, each mouthful is tangy and refreshing, with a subtle smoky and ear thy after taste from the tofu and herbs. This dish alone is worth travelling to Guizhou for, but if you can’t make it down to the lush, mountainous and ethnically diverse province itself, Jun Qin Hua is the next best thing.
Address: 88 Meishuguan Houjie, Dongcheng District 东城区美术馆后街88号
Source: imeoutbeijing.com
