All the major food countries have their own forms of barbecue, from the spit roasters of Italy to the masala-rubbed, clay oven meats of India. In China, there is a long tradition of 'cue, where the meats of choice are generally pork, chicken or duck.
Stroll though any North American Chinatown and there will be choice cuts hanging in windows, sides of pork with crackling skin; flattened, air-dried birds with bronzed exteriors; and fine, fatty fowl in varying shades of brown from hearty soy-sauce rubs. Business at these emporiums is usually half takeout, half seated diners, and Chinese dialects, particularly Cantonese, are volubly spoken throughout.
BBQ King, a new takeout and sit-down restaurant a few blocks to the west of Chinatown Plaza Mall, has all the same attributes of big city Chinese barbecue joints: great meats redolent of five-spice powder; coriander and ginger; a huge menu of rice, noodle dishes and hot pots from all over China; and a price-point that must be humbling to anyone who runs a restaurant within two miles of the Strip.
At first glance, the place is distressingly modest. The barbecue counter is just through the front door, marked by a line of Chinese folks here for pei pa duck, a flattened, whole duck with crisp skin, chopped into pieces, on top of a piquant sauce; the abominable pig, in mind-boggling varieties of preparation; and ethnic stuff Westerners generally won't touch, blood-rare breasts of squab, duck feet, and even stewed pig intestines. Everything is lavishly good.
If you've come for a sit-down meal, though, don't expect lavish comforts. The seating is at charmless Formica tables, on straight-backed plastic chairs furnished with green vinyl cushions. On the walls are blow-up photos of pandas, little girls slurping noodles, and similar icons of Chinese culture. Salt and pepper are on the table, plus a glass jar of chili sauce and the inevitable pitcher of soy.
But the cooking provides all the charm you'll need. The best strategy is to start with a platter of those barbecued meats. The roast duck is amazing and easily the best around. The skin is crisp, because most of the fat has been dripped away, and the meat and even bones are redolent of five-spice powder, a seasoning with a faint licorice cast.
Soy-sauce chicken is another delicious discovery, a whole chicken that has been simply marinated in salty soy sauce until it takes on a pale-brown hue. The skin is flaccid and unappealing, but the meat is moist and juicy. Marinated duck wings are an incredible eight pieces for $1. Barbecued chicken livers are only $4.95 a pound.
The rest of the menu is impressive, too. One of my favorite dishes here is pao yu kon pon: pan-fried, spicy-salt squid. They will do the ubiquitous take of fried calamari if you insist, but this dish, a stir-fry of squid body and tentacles with a toss of carrots, snow peas, ginger and garlic, is tender, flavorsome and complex, an improvement over the more common fried version.
Think of spicy salt like Lawry's, Chinese style. The condiment, which is sweeter than our seasoned salt, also flavors spicy-salt pork chop, crisply breaded hunks of deep-fried pork that your cardiologist will beg you to resist.
The best dish from the beef section of the menu is black-bean sauce beef: flat, pounded flank steak in a rich, salty sauce that mixes divinely with white rice. Beef, a hard-to-find commodity in China, is rarely barbecued in Chinese restaurants.
The rice dish I'm totally hooked on is anchovy-chicken fried rice, which isn't as fishy as you might think. Rather, it's mildly salty fried rice with cooked egg and chicken blended in, a subtle dish that blends well with vegetables and other dishes. The best noodle dish is pickled-vegetable, roasted-duck vermicelli, made with wispy rice noodles called mai fun. In all, there are 15 noodle dishes on BBQ King's menu, and all the ones I tasted were excellent.
Ditto for vegetable dishes. Crispy tofu is cubes of deep-fried tofu served with a spicy dipping sauce, and great for the vegetarian in the group. XO sauce green beans don't qualify because there are minced, dried scallops in the sauce, but the beans are done to a turn, slightly blackened from being quick fried in the wok.
In season, there are do mieu, leafy green pea shoots, quickly sautéed in oil and garlic (the menu calls them garlic pea tips). For stalwarts, the kitchen does a nice job with pan-fried Chinese broccoli, and there is the option to have it with oyster sauce, which gives it a more interesting dimension.
The menu also lists the requisite number of rice plates, congee rice porridges and noodles in soup, the sort of stuff lone Chinese diners can be seen noshing on early in the day. But it's never too early for good barbecue, so fire up the grill.