YongChuan Will Numb Your Tongue and Open Your Eyes

Photo: Courtesy of YongChuan

Last week, I reviewed Cha Cha Tang, a new restaurant in the West Village that is part of a wave of Cantonese spots that’s been rising for the past two or three years, unseating Sichuan cooking from its place in the spotlight. No cause for concern among the má là partisans, to be clear — Sichuan isn’t going anywhere, and there are still many places in the city to get your fix. One of them is a new restaurant I was tipped off about on Clinton Street, YongChuan. In a minimal-elegant dining room the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge, chef Qiu Xingzhong is offering takes on two regional cuisines: Sichuan, from the southwest of China, and the less-omnipresent Ningbo, from the Zhejiang province some 1,200 miles to the east.

Though the Sichuan-style dishes are no less tasty than the Zhejiang ones, it’s hard not to suspect their inclusion is intended at least in part as a lure to diners more accustomed to seeking out mapo tofu. But it was the seafood-heavy cuisine of Ningbo that was a revelation to me.

Given that Ningbo is a major port on the East China Sea, little surprise that fish and shellfish feature so heavily. “The seas off Ningbo and the Zhoushan islands, one of China’s most productive fisheries, teem with hundreds of varieties of fish, shellfish and crustaceans,” Fuchsia Dunlop writes in Invitation to a Banquet, her history of Chinese food, and her partial catalogue is a small masterpiece of animalia:

… yellow croaker, silvery hairtail and pomfret, mackerel, tonguefish, lizardfish, Chinese herring, eel and “jumping” mudskipper; fierce-jawed Bombay duck (a type of fish, despite its English name, with flesh as tender as tofu — its other local monikers include “tofu fish” and “dragon-head fish”); cuttlefish, octopus and sand eel; clams, cockles, razor clams and mussels; crabs and mantis shrimp; even curiosities such as the spoon worm or penis fish (“sea intestine” in Chinese) and goose-necked barnacles, known there as “Buddha’s hands” — not to mention the sea vegetables laver seaweed, branched string lettuce and kelp.

I didn’t sample any Bombay duck, as far as I know, and no penis fish either, but the braised bass with rattan peppercorns — similar to Sichuan pepper, and similarly numbing, with a more vegetal, fresher flavor and a milder burn — was delicious, a shareable tureen of skin-on bass pieces crowned with green sprigs of fresh peppercorns in a subtle, spicy broth. Yellow croaker, a Ningbo mainstay, is available in bean-curd-wrapped spring rolls or steamed, whole, bone in. “Stinky melon,” a fermented Zhejiang street-food classic, makes an appearance, too.

The menu calls out regional specialties or preparations. Sautéed pea shoots were good, but I preferred the cold Ningbo-style “grilled vegetables,” baby bok choy, similar in preparation and texture to the shoots, served cold in a sweet, smoky sauce. There are plenty of dumplings on the dim sum menu — steamed shrimp and pickled pepper with big hunks of shrimp, well-seasoned pan-fried pork — but you may as well try the Ningbo-style wontons, folded in on themselves like oversize tortellini, which combine the more expected pork filling with dried shrimp, tofu, long beans, and pickled vegetables.

One day soon, I hope to be back for the order-ahead feasts — braised pomfret with rice cakes, roast goose, something tantalizingly referred to as the Ningbo Eighteen Cuts. Honor compels me to inform you that even if the entire preceding case did not convince you, if you’re leaving Ningbo to the wiser among us, and want more Sichuan, I can tell you this: We loved a recommended dish called mala prawns, fried buzzy and orange-stained with ginger and Sichuan pepper, like aquatic Doritos. Not quite as subtle, admittedly, but we gobbled them down anyway, crispy-fried tails and all.