Red “Chilli” House…doesn’t “Chilli” read like a misspelled word that knocked a spelling bee contestant out of the competition? Or like someone added one too many letter “l’s” to the already misspelled word “chili?” Actually, that spelling (which some of us purists consider Texan) is by design. The delightful Chinese restaurant sporting that appellation–which opened its doors in June, 2024–wouldn’t change it. Among other things, it illustrates just how important Capsicum is in some provinces of China, particularly Sichuan and Hunan.
Capsicum, as most New Mexicans know, is the genus to which all chili (chile in New Mexico) peppers and bell peppers belong. The fruit of the capsicum plant contains a chemical called capsaicin, the active ingredient that gives chile its piquancy. Historians widely agree that capsicum was unknown outside the tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas before 1490s. That’s when Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue and brought this red-fruited plant along with other food plants, such as maize, beans and squash, from the New World to the Old.
When introduced to China in the 16th Century, chile peppers were called “barbarian peppers” on account of their foreign origin. Eventually the province of Sichuan developed a profound predilection for piquant peppers. By the 20th Century, you couldn’t find a Sichuan menu without extremely piquant peppers. Among those with a zealous passion for hot peppers was Chairman Mao, the founding father of the Chinese republic. Mao was known to have declared “A man who dares to eat hot peppers fears nothing; all of our Red Army soldiers loved spicy food.”
Today, the tongue-tingling, throat-scorching cuisine of the Sichuan region with its liberal use of hot peppers is without doubt the most popular culinary style in China. Increasingly, the cuisine of the Sichuan (also spelled Szechuan) is poised to supplant the much milder Cantonese cuisine as the most popular Chinese food style across the fruited plain. Fire-eaters (like me) have learned that tolerance of the piquancy generated by New Mexico’s sacrosanct red and green does not always translate to being able to handle the Napalm heat of Szechuan peppers. It can be a painful lesson.
Though the Red Chilli House menu doesn’t feature Sichuan cuisine exclusively, that menu has a respectable number of dishes that bring the heat. One section of the menu is titled “American Chinese,” an acknowledgement that the fifteen items on that section were created by Chinese immigrants. Other sections of the menu are titled: Popular Items (20), Appetizers (10), Soup (3), Buns/Dumplings (11), Signature Dish (23), Vegetables (9) Fried Rice (8), Noodles (12) and Dessert (6). The menu also has a 14 item section for Lunch Specials.
Among the most intriguing aspects of the menu is the “authenticity” of the menu. While American tastes lean toward sweet and sour dishes, the closest you’ll find to those are orange chicken and sesame chicken, both featuring white meat. Instead, the menu includes such items eschewed by the American palate as pork lungs in chili sauce, spicy beef tripe slices, spicy beef tendon,and beef and intestines in chili oil. One item which piqued my interest was “hand-grabbed lamb chops (which sounds rather like a ribald joke).
11 July 2024: Fittingly, one of the walls at the Red Chilli House is festooned with decorative bamboo dim sum baskets, the type of which are used at dim sum restaurants to ferry delectable delights to your table. Among the most popular dim sum items are dumplings and buns, either steamed or pan-fried. There are eleven items on the Buns/Dumplings section of the menu. They’re all prepared in-house by a very skilled chef. You can even purchase frozen dumplings to prepare at home later. We didn’t want to wait. My Kim picked out the pan-fried buns. Though served on a plate and not on a dim sum basket, these gems have a slightly crispy bottom (there’s a joke in there somewhere) that gives way to a marble-sized pork sausage orb. Served in quantities of five per order and accommpanied by soy sauce, they’re quite good.
11 July 2024: Remember that “American Chinese” menu section I mentioned earlier. Sesame chicken (crispy chicken pieces tossed in a sweet and savory honey sesame sauce) is among the items on that section of the menu though the origin of sesame chicken is in dispute. Some sources credit its origin to the southern Chinese region of Guangdong while other sources believe it was invented in North America back in the 1970s. Whatever it’s origin, it’s a very popular dish across the fruited plain. It’s not a dish I would ever order (too sweet for my tastes), but my Kim will. She enjoyed Red Chilli’s version.
11 July 2024: A recent (June 2024) visit to Kwok’s Bistro, a James Beard “Best Chef: Southwest” semifinalist restaurant in Reno reminded me how good Chinese eggplant dishes can be. Though my preference is for Sichuan eggplant with its piquant notes, Red Chilli’s eggplant with garlic sauce (from the Vegetables section of the menu) is the next best thing. The gently steamed eggplant is so tender it practically melts in your mouth. It’s lightly sauteed and tossed with a flavorful and umami-rich garlic sauce. Garlic cloves help cement the garlic flavors vampires hate.
30 September 2024: My friend and former stand-up comedian Bill Resnik has shared more meals with me than anyone but my Kim. Our tastes are remarkably similar, especially when it comes to Chinese food. Neither of us is fond of sweet-and-sour anything. Our preferences lie in Chinese food that has a personality, especially if that personality is assertive and angry. Even more than me, Bill will add Chinese chili oil to Chinese food that’s already too hot for most people to eat. He’s a bona fide volcano eater who would thrive in the Szechuan province of China where foods are as explosive as Old Faithful.
When ordering from a Chinese menu, Bill is likely going to ask if the item is sweet, a good indication he probably won’t like it. He’ll then ask that the dish be made “extra hot” as in lots of Chinese chili peppers, the small and spicy dynamite that will make your nose run just by looking at them. Predictably, he ordered shredded pork with garlic sauce for his inaugural meal at Red Chilli House. Chili peppers festooned this stir-fried dish along with red- and green-peppers and a generous amount of pork which didn’t at all resemble shredded pork (at least as you’ll find shredded pork in barbecue). The combination of garlic, chili and chili oil was terrific. This is a dish I’ll order again.
30 September 2024: During our three year tour of England, my Kim and I learned to appreciate (okay, love) leeks, a vastly underappreciated Rodney Dangerfield (they get no respect) of the vegetable family. Closely related to onions and garlic, but with a sweeter and more mild flavor, leeks to taste like a mild and delicate version of an onion, with the same base flavor but far less intensity. The Mermaid, our favorite restaurant in Burford (the most beautiful village in England, by the way) prepared the very best leeks I’ve ever had. They’re permanently imprinted on my memory engrams
Red Chilli House’s version of leeks didn’t resemble The Mermaid’s version (not even close) but the vast differences demonstrate the versatility of this vegetable. While enjoying my plate of shredded pork with yellow leeks, I kept wondering where the unique flavor of the dish emanated. It was most certainly from the leeks having been stir-fried along with celery and bell peppers. In describing this dish, Saveur noted “Leeks are sliced on the diagonal to increase the surface area exposed to the wok; that way, they wilt and release their fragrance faster. The pork is sliced thinly so that it will brown quickly before it loses its moisture.” That all makes sense, but I’m convinced leeks inherit a unique flavor profile when stir-fried.
30 September 2024: When you contemplate foods that are indigenous to China, potatoes are likely not among them. Potatoes didn’t arrive in China until Dutch traders brought them in the mid-1600s. As in Ireland, they quickly became associated with poverty and food shortages. Today, China is the world’s largest potato producer, although about half of the 95 million metric tons it grows every year is exported or fed to livestock. By contrast, Americans eat 80% of what is grown domestically. If you’ve never seen potatoes on a Chinese restaurant’s menu, maybe you’re not visiting the right Chinese restaurants.
At Szechuan style Chinese restaurants (such as Nio Szechuan and the Red Chilli House), shredded potatoes are a classic appetizer . Slightly crunchy, laced with red- and green-peppers as well as ginger, these tubers can be habit-forming. Shredded potatoes are remarkably uniform in size and are thinner than shoestring fries, albeit not fried. Szechuan chefs have mastered the art of preparing shredded potatoes so that they’re not starchy and soft (even mushy). They remain crispy for the duration of your enjoyment–and you will enjoy them immensely.
The Red Chilli House has given Albuquerque’s west-siders a reason to follow Horace Greely’s advice. If our first visit is any indication, we’ll be going west quite often.
Red Chilli House
8201 Golf Course Road N.W.
Albuquerque, New Mexico
(505) 681-8869
Website |
LATEST VISIT: 30 September 2024
1st VISIT: 11 July 2024
# OF VISITS: 2
RATING: 23
COST: $$
BEST BET: Eggplant in Garlic Sauce, Sesame Chicken, Pork Buns, Shredded Pork With Garlic Sauce
REVIEW #1412
Its spelled “Chillay”
Please try to keep up, Ruben
I thought it was spelled “chilleigh?” 🤔
Very genuine Szechuan, and overall really good. And, our waitress informed that they have a “special menu” in addition to the standard one.
Ann & Bruce, we haven’t heard from you in a long time. I hope you’ve been healthy, happy and eating at a lot of great Duke City restaurants. I’ll have to visit Red Chilli House soon to try that “special menu.” The more authentic Chinese food is, the better.
Thanks for the kind words. We pretty much went out of circulation during the pandemic, but I admit even before that we had become more asocial, doing more cooking experiments at home. We’re also eager to try the special menu (since we didn’t hear about it until the end of our meal there).
I enjoyed both versions of the shredded pork dishes and they were both wonderful and distinct from each other. I will definitely have them again. I’ll be back, but will have to save up for it since most things at Red Chilli House are priced higher than their counterparts at other restaurants like Neo. I had a little sticker shock, but not a lot, and it was quickly forgotten because the food was very good. I don’t think I’ll be ordering the wontons in chili oil – they were surprisingly bland and somewhat gummy in texture.
Cheers,
FS
Oh, you’re trying to lecture us on how to spell chile””?