Chinese Chili Mac

While Szechuan cooking easily answers the American chili mac (you know, spaghetti, chili, and onions all mixed together) with dan dan noodles, A&J Restaurant offers its own Chinese chili mac variation: “noodles with ground pork and bean paste sauce.” Dan dan noodles, at least the ones that I’ve had at places like Formosa Cafe, are thin noodles swimming in a bowl of molten chili oil, topped with ground pork, and flecked with scallions. A&J’s noodle dish is somewhat more exotic, but a chili mac, nonetheless.

A&J specializes in northern Chinese cooking, which others have described as more bread and noodle focused than the rice centric Chinese meals with which most Americans are familiar. The DC area is blessed with two A&J locations in Annandale, VA and Rockville, MD, just two lonely outposts of the sprawling A&J empire: A&J apparently has roughly a dozen or so restaurants scattered throughout the world.

While A&J has garnered a fair amount of praise from the Washingtonian and the Washington Post, among others, until recently, I had yet to discover any one item that was truly revelatory. I really wanted to like A&J, as it offers an abundance of cheap eats oddities, particularly small plates and dim sum, like the “steamed spareribs with spiced rice powder” and  the “Chinese sesame biscuit with sliced beef.” Unfortunately, the rice powder lent the spare ribs an unsettling texture, and the sesame biscuit was stale and stuffed with dry, tired beef. Even their version of sesame noodles, hot and spicy and topped with peanut powder, was disappointing- not especially spicy and hardly enough peanut and sesame presence to satisfy.

But the noodles, themselves, captured my imagination. A&J offers its customers the choice of thin or thick noodles, and I, being somewhat of a piglet, always opted for the thick noodles. The thick noodles are wide like Japanese udon, and so pliant and doughy that they must be homemade. I couldn’t stop thinking about them, and so I was drawn back to A&J despite my earlier disappointment. This time, I decided to try their “noodles with ground pork and bean paste sauce.” As I’ve found in numerous ethnic restaurants, the tersely worded listing on the menu barely described the actual reality of the dish.

The ground pork was cooked in a bean paste sauce that lent it an appealing reddish hue, and was not too sweet and only mildly spicy. And much to my surprise, the substantial mound of pork and noodles turned out to be flanked by a pile of cucumber shreds and another pile of fresh bean sprouts. The cucumber shreds may have had a touch of rice wine vinegar, but seemed otherwise untreated, as were the bean sprouts. But here’s how A&J presented the cucumber in an ingenious format for this dish: they shredded it lengthwise into long, thin, noodle-like pieces of cucumber. This enabled me to easily wrap both the noodles and the cucumber around my fork, spear a few bean sprouts with the exposed tines and coat the bound parcel in ground pork. Awesome. The combination of the two crisp, refreshing vegetables was a perfect counterpoint to the savory ground pork, and the thick noodles were the perfect starchy bond to bring all of the elements together.

Okay, so my chili mac definition is a bit expansive, but if you squint long enough at this dish it morphs into Hard Times’ three-way chili mac with Cincinnati. I swear. Or maybe I’m just an insane person.

Though most of A&J’s menu features small plates, this dish is a kingly portion, practically enough for two to share, and a bargain at only $5.95. -AC