Recently, when we've been going out for our biweekly Chinese food "fix", it's been Taste of Hunan. Well, a few days back we wanted some takeout and didn't feel like making the drive out to Scripps Ranch. The Missus was wondering how Village Kitchen was doing, so, like on our last visit over a year-and-a-half ago we decided to do some takeout.
Upon arriving we went with our "regular" dishes and tried something new as well.
We were really feeling like a couple of dishes with La Rou, so we went with the LA Rou with Radish Skin ($19.75) and the La Rou with Bamboo Shoots ($19.75).
These were dishes that we've ordered several times. It would be interesting to see how things were on this visit.
The Smoked Pork with Bamboo Shoos was the better of the two dishes.
The smoked pork was a bit chewy, but imparted a good porky-smokiness to the dish. The bamboo shoots were nice and crunchy, while still being tender and moist. Most important was the flavor, good savory-umami soy sauce tones, not overly salty, it perhaps could have used a bit more "heat", but was not bad.
We've had the Smoked Pork with Radish Skin many times. It had earned a spot as an item we'd regularly order. But this time, it was not very good.
This time around we really didn't enjoy this, as the dried radish had not been properly prepped; it was super hard....not crunchy, but really hard. Along with the chewy smoked pork, the overall textures just weren't pleasing. There was not enough heat in this and it just seemed bland overall, like it hadn't been seasoned well, nor stir fried properly and just "thrown together".
The one item we hadn't noticed before; I'm thinking it's a rather new dish is the Stinky Tofu with Pork Intestine ($18.75). A great "cloud" of offaly fragrance rose above our dining table when I opened this.
I'm thinking that the Chou Doufu is not really needed in this dish as it appeared charred, wasn't really overly funky-smelly-"toe jammy"-rotten smelling. It was quite mild. The pork intestine was very tender and had kept the funky-offal-ly flavor, it was quite savory. While this dish could have used more spice; it had good peppery-soy sauce tones and was quite enjoyable....if you're a pork intestine kinda eater. Which we are.
While not as refined, without a broad array of flavors, and not as spicy as what we've been having at Taste of Hunan; two of the three dishes were tasty and the portion sizes were quite generous. I'd say the food at Village Kitchen is a bit more rustic, the taste a bit more simple. It's not a bad thing at all. Sometimes that will just do fine.
Village Kitchen
4720 Clairemont Mesa Blvd
San Diego, CA 92117
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