Dong Ting Spring

Dong Ting Spring Restaurant Review:

Upstairs in the San Gabriel Village mall, Dong Ting Spring is one of the area's new wave of Hunan restaurants. Dark wood chairs and patterned carpets make the restaurant a touch more formal than the usual brightly lit room, and a large menu features hard-to-find Hunan specialties as well as more familiar dishes. Hunan-style dishes include steamed fish head casserole with hot peppers (a true showstopper), rabbit braised in beer, paper-pot roasted duck, and fried chicken gizzards with sour hot peppers. There's a good selection of vegetable dishes such as napa cabbage with chopped chile peppers, stir-fried eggplant with long beans, and sautéed Taiwanese lettuce. Unusual soups include lotus with pork ribs and duck with lily and herbed taro. Cumin lamb, steamed Hunan ham, and fried beef with wild pepper fill out the meat categories of the menu. Beer and wine are available.