New Chong Qing

• Cuisine(s): Chinese
  Price: $$
  Payment Types: cash
• Serving: Dinner, Lunch
  Alcohol: None
  Reservations: Not Necessary
• Parking: Lot Available, Street

Description

At New Chong Qing, located in a sterile mini-mall anchored at one end by a bank and at the other by a chain drugstore, the menu seems pretty extensive, but a fish pot is placed on the table almost as soon as you sit down, and the waiter is already concocting a dipping sauce out of chopped Sichuan pickles and a ladleful of broth. Sichuan-style hot pots are common in the San Gabriel Valley, and if you've done the rounds, you've seen your share of them, but the fish pot at New Chong Qing is almost another species: heaving rather than seething; delicate rather than overwhelming; forming fat, glassy bubbles rather than erupting into spitting, violent geysers of liquid. This food is made for beer, but you will have to content yourself with a glass of fresh cucumber or watermelon juice. Is the dish as intense as the water-boiled fish at either of the Chung Kings? Probably not, but the fish tends to be of higher quality, and it's nice to be able to manipulate the flame yourself. See full review.