[Irvine] [Chinese] Spicy City

Spicy City
雲川園
14310 Culver Dr #F
Irvine, CA 92604
(949) 733-9200

Dr. P's cousin-in-law is a real estate agent.  He took an afternoon to show us some houses around the area for us to get an idea about the housing market right now.  It was so nice of him to do that for us.  We wanted to treat him to dinner.  So I thought, Koreans like spicy food, so why not take him to try Chinese spicy food?


風味涼菜 Cold Table Appetizers ($5.50)

We started the meal with 3 items cold appetizer combo.  There were green veggie, spicy beef, and seaweed.  The nice waitress also gave us a bit of the tofu noodle to sample.  Everything was tasty.  But....  This turned out to be our favorite item of the night.



雲南田七氣鍋湯 Yunan Style Steamed Chicken in Clay Pot ($8.99)

Dr. P loves soup.  So I picked Yunan Style Steamed Chicken in Clay Pot.  The soup was a bit oily as you can see in the picture.  There were gogi berries and longan in the soup.  Chicken was cut into bit size, but with a lot of bones.  The  soup had a slightly bitter taste to it.  It tasted like those Chinese herbal soup although I only found gogi berries in the soup.  Cousin-in-law said this tasted like Korean ginseng soup.  I liked the flavor of the soup, but didn't like the bones and oil.


水煮兩樣 (牛、魚) Boiled 2 Kinds w/ Hot Sauce (Beef & Fish) ($9.99)

As usual, we ordered Dr. P's favorite Boiled 2 Kinds with Hot Sauce.  And as usual, he picked beef and fish.  Last time we had this dish at Spicy City, it was great.  This time the dish was so spicy that we couldn't taste any flavor except spiciness.  My lips and tongue were numb after one bite.  Also there were garlic in the dish last time, but there were none this time.  The fish and beef were both really soft, which was good.  But the spiciness was too overwhelming.  My stomach acted up for the next few days.  Dr. P suffered from acid reflex that night.  Cousin-in-law told us he couldn't sleep that night because he had bad heartburn.


毛家紅燒肉 Mao's Style Pork in Brown Sauce ($9.99)

To balance with the spicy dish, we ordered one non-spicy dish.  I've had Mao's Style Pork in Brown Sauce from SGV's Szechuan restaurants before, and really like the dish.  Spicy City's version was a disappointment.  The pork was quite tough, and the flavor was completely off.  It didn't taste like any Mayo's Style Pork I've ever had elsewhere.  Cousin-in-law said it was good, out of politeness I think.  I thought it was bad, and Dr. P didn't like it at all.  We ended up tossing the leftover.

Our second visit to Spicy City was a bit disappointing.  We still love their cold appetizers.  Since this is a new restaurant, plus our waitress was super nice and cute, I wouldn't mind trying them again.  I still want to try their noodles.

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