We've been meaning to go to this place for m..o..n..t..h..s and it finally took Chang to create the opportunity. Luckily, Wendy came along to navigate the menu and help us decipher the heat scales. You see, this is the restaurant for genuine Sichuan Chinese in Atlanta. Blogs are written about this place. Folks travel all of the State of Georgia for a dish. In a crappy stripmall off Franklin Road in Marietta, GA. Behind a Burger King. Next to a Latin danceclub. We probably would have missed it from the road without these details from Chang.
The menu is really dominated by your traditional Americanized Chinese food, but look past it. Turn a couple of pages until you find their specialties. Eric and I had our preferred dish lists in hand, as we had done some pre-dinner research on what was worth getting like three plates of. Keep in mind, if you get sold on a dish description online, pick out a plan b, plan c, etc. Some menus are marked through with items no longer offered. Some menus aren't. So be prepared to be flexible.
We started off with "hot and numbing beef" which is an appetizer portion of dried beef strips sauteed in the reddest chili sauce. Sprinkled with sesame seeds and put atop shredded raw cabbage, which soaks up any lingering liquid spice. This really is the dish worth ordering four of. We couldn't get enough. Each piece was even more spicy and more numbing than the last, yet you can't stop!
We also ordered the Sichuan Beef, Beef Hot Pot, Scallion Bread, Green Beans with Olives, and a fish dish with homemade tofu. The bread is absolute necessity (although I did not partake; I was all about the rice) for balancing the heat. Eric was sweating in parts he didn't know he had sweat glands. The bread (and rice) takes the edge off slightly. But you still sweat. The green beans were amazing, and definitely worth ordering again. Not hot at all, but a nice crisp green diversion from the flaming meats. The Sichuan beef had a slight breading coating, not necessarily fried, but enough to soak up even more heat than say the "hot and numbing beef".
This restaurant is definitely worth the trip - especially on one of those cold winter weekend nights when a cold front wedge has set up from the Appalachian mountains and settled in metro Atlanta. Anyone game for burning off their tastebuds? Just give us a call and we'll be there in a flash!
Tasty China
585 Franklin Road SE
Marietta, GA 30067
(770) 419-9849
They have no website, but click here for the unofficial blog on Tasty China
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