Our bus dropped us at the main drag of Zhangjiajie City in Hunan province. It is a modern city with traffic and all. And naturally being close to the bus station, it was also crowded with travelers. We hailed a cab to bring us to our hotel for the night. It seems like the people of Zhangjiajie City are aware of the fame of their place and are quite pushy. The driver was asking whether or not we want to purchase tickets for the nearby national park from someone he knows. Of course, he gets a cut. We politely refused but he persisted. But it soon became clear to him that we were not interested so we just kept quiet.
At one point on the way to the hotel there was a horrendous traffic jam. Our dear driver got impatient and drove on the pavement, right where the pedestrians are! It seems that he has done this several times since he maneouvered with ease. Soon enough we got to our hotel which was also on a main road on the other side of the block.
After checking in, we quickly stepped out to look for a place to eat. It was quite dark and there doesn’t seem to be too many nice places to eat in this area. There were a few street vendors selling stuff similar to what we saw in Fenghuang. Their deep fried stuff doesn’t seem to be too appetizing and based on what I tasted in Fenghuang, they weren’t that good at all. The oil they use for frying seems to be from last week.
After minutes of going back and forth we settled on a Hunanese restaurant near the hotel. It was a small but decent restaurant. There were a few diners in the restaurant, so I guess it can’t be that bad. The name of the restaurant is Chang De You Yi Jia 常德又一家. I ordered a few Hunan style dishes so we can sample the taste of Hunan.
Hunan is home to a lot of minorities and among them the Tujia and Miao minority have left their mark in Hunan’s cuisine. This restaurant also serve these types of food. Sometimes it is difficult to tell one from the other already.
Our first dish was Tofu with Chives. It was a healthy looking dish since it has tofu and just vegetables. It was actually quite tasty with the ingredients cooked in some sauce giving it a saltish taste. Our other dish is Dry Wok Chicken. This is basically a small wok with chicken simmering in sauce. The wok is put above a small fire so that the sauce continues to sizzle and boil. It also keeps the chicken hot, which is a good thing since it is still quite cold outside. The point of the dish is the sauce keeps bubbling away until there is little left. The sauce that is left is now stronger and more concentrated giving the chicken even more flavor.
Although Hunan food is known to be fiery hot, even more so that Sichuan cuisine. This one wasn’t really that spicy. The main difference in between Hunan food and Sichuan food is that Hunan cuisine hardly uses Sichuan pepper. Hunan food also tends to use a lot more vegetables in their dishes. This is probably due to the influence of the minority groups in the province.
As for the restaurant itself. The place is clean and the service is as good as it can be. There was a Hollywood movie being played in the restaurant. It was dubbed in Chinese though I didn’t really care. It seems the restaurant here opens for long hours so it should be a good place to go for dinner when one just stumbles into the area. Although I’m sure there are a lot more better ones out there.
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