Whats in a name? A lot!

Not very pretty-looking but the steamed fish head with red hot chillies tastes wonderful... especially after its been sitting in the sauce a while.

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 10 We were set to complete our trilogy of Sichuan restaurants with Xin Dong Tong in Pudu, Kuala Lumpur, when we discovered it was really a Hunanese restaurant. (We had already eaten at TKS in Jalan Alor, and ZGM Ramen in Imbi before this.) Whats the difference you may ask?

Hunanese food seems more refined and less obvious than Sichuan food, with the use of salted pickled red chillies in quite a number of dishes. There is also the liberal sprinkling of fried dried red chillies, but somehow the heat is gentler than in Sichuan food.

The panfried stick prawns is a must-try.

You can find fragrant spices like star anise, cinnamon, fennel and cumin, and a few Sichuan peppercorns in some of the dishes, but it is not used till it numbs, as in Sichuan food. Pork (and pigs innards), beef, duck and lamb feature in a Hunanese menu, as do fish and eel.

Its hard to forget the dishes we had at Xin Dong Tong. Top of our list was the Braised Pigs Trotter which had deepfried dried chillies heaped over it. The skin of the meat glistened in the dark brown sauce, and it offered tender, creamy bites, a wonderful balance of the fat and lean, the fragrance of spices well infused in it. The chillies offered a welcoming slow burn.

Our first dish had been the Boiled Pigs Stomach Peppercorn Soup. It was more a stew than a soup, hot and peppery, with salted vegetables giving a tart kick to it. The slices of pigs stomach had a crunch to them.

We also had an appetizer of braised chicken feet with chilli and Sichuan peppers. It was all about the firm, springy chicken skin, with the chilli and pep! pers war ming up the palate.

Shredded potato and chilli... an unsual and crunchy dish.

We were pleasantly surprised by the Shredded Potato with Chilli. The diced potato had a crunchy bite, and tasted more like a vegetable than potato. We surmised that the potato must have been diced and soaked in salt water to get rid of the starch, then wokfried with pickled salted chilli, onions and spring onion.

We later checked a Hunanese cookbook and found we were right. It seemed so simple but tasted so good. There was a little sourness in the chilli that worked well with the potato. I had repeated helpings of this.

We also had the Steamed Fishhead with Red Hot Chilli. Its a fleshy silver carp that looked quite lethal with the red chillies and their seeds smothering it. I spotted bits of preserved black beans among the chilli, and these salty bursts tempered down the tartness and hotness of the bright red hot chillies. We liked the fish even more after it had sat some time in the sauce, the flavours embracing the fish and upping its tastiness.

The spicy chicken feet will wake up any appetite.

Panfried Stick Prawns was our last dish. As the name suggests, the prawns were threaded on a stick and deepfried, and then buried under deepfried dried chillies, fried garlic, onions, and sprinkled with sesame seeds. They were excellent the salt hitting the tongue first, then the scent and numbing sensation of Sichuan peppercorns and chilli, and the sweetness of onions. The shells of the prawns were so crispy you could crunch them whole and eat them with the prawns.

The menu is quite extensive at Xin Dong Tong, and its worth many more visits. The food is priced reasonably: the braised trotter is RM38, pigs stomach soup RM18, and everything else between RM20 and ! RM30.

Other dishes I would like to try include Stewed Eel in Wine, Shredded Duck with Beer, Stewed Pigs Intestines with Special Sauce, Bacon with Marinated Green Beans, Fried Shredded Greens with Minced Pork (a lot of people were ordering this!), Stewed Beancurd with Fishhead and Hot Spicy Diced Chicken.

Xin Dong Tong is located at 194 Jalan Changkat Tambi Dollah, off Jalan Pudu (Tel: 03-2144-4128).