Dishes like fuqi feipian (“couple’s deight”, cold beef offal slices in a spicy Sichuan sauce) tend not to show up outside of Chinese menus . Enter A One Kitchen, a sports bar whose menu is written in English, and offers Sichuan dishes alongside Vietnamese American crab with garlic butter sauce, garlic noodles, and fusion dishes like shrimp in kataifi dough, salmon egg rolls, and a mango salad.
As it turns out, the chef, the son of a chef, is from Sichuan province. The bartender, yes there is a full bar, said the chef had been cooking Sichuan food throughout the Bay Area and his last job was in the Richmond district at a restaurant whose Chinese name sounded something like “la maidge”.
Dishes have Chinese and English names on the take-out menu, which gave a few hints. Spicy lamb (or beef) skewers are elsewhere known as toothpick lamb, the crispy wings are Chongqing chicken, the hot and spicy fish fillet is listed as Chengdu style. There are no hot vegetable dishes. This is, after all, a sports bar.
Spicy lamb skewers, threaded on toothpicks, deep-fried and then wok fried with chilis, red Sichuan peppercorns. green and western onion, and bell pepper were delicious. The lamb is juicier, oilier, and more numbing than the egg-white dipped version at Chengdu Style in Berkeley, and has a sweeter taste. I could swear I tasted celery seed in there.
The sticky rice cakes, planks with a soft center and crisp exterior, were coated with a sweet syrup and I think peanut powder. These were a fun snack, but felt deflated and the sauce too sticky. I prefer the similar item at Chef Zhao and the sauceless and taller version at I-Shanghai Delight.
Open from 4pm till midnight, which I guess puts them in competition with Dongbei/skewer restaurant BBQ King.
