Hunan Cuisine

I don’t know how anyone can rate this restaurant as deserving 5 stars. The food is terrible! It’s the worst Chinese food I have had in years and I cannot recommend this restaurant at all.
On Christmas eve 12÷24÷15, my stepson, his wife and baby came over for dinner. My husband decided to order take-​out from Hunan Cuisine because we had previously ordered from Little Village (which was good and I highly recommend) when we had friends from Japan over for dinner. I had eaten Hunan food at a restaurant in San Francisco, some time ago and enjoyed the food so I accepted his decision. (BIG MISTAKE!) We should have ordered from Little Village.
We ordered the following dishes: (1) Salt and Pepper Shrimp (2) Sliced fish w/​black bean sauce (3) Broiled lamb in hot sichuan sauce (4) Mongolian Beef, (5) (Moo-​su Prk (that is how they spell it) (6) Hunan vegetable (7) House special fried rice and (8)Crab Rangoon (listed on their website but not available except they did not inform us at the time of the phone order and instead substituted 2 greasy, spring or egg roll, which we did not order and did not eat)). The bill was $ 90.55
I remember Hunan food as being hot and spicy. This one was bland, oily and the seasoning was terrible. All the dishes tasted the same with the oily sauce poured over it. I ate a few bites and that was all I could eat.
I felt badly for my guests, because they were polite and tried to eat as much as they could even though I could tell they did not enjoy the food. There was a lot of left-​overs. My husband ate what he could but I refused to eat any of the leftovers. I threw out the rest of the food.
I will never ever, order anything from this restaurant.

DUDE! Whatever you do ignore the negative whiny reviews, some people are just too high maintenance and don’t know how to enjoy traditional Szechuan Chinese cuisine!!!
I live to eat and everyone knows it =)
This is the best REAL Chinese food in the STATE!!! And if you like Spicy DOUBLE BONUS!
Menu– intensive and a tiny bit higher cost than most, BUT THE DISHES ARE WORTH IT! $ 10-​$ 15
Parking– Chinatown has tons of street parking and cheap municipal parking lots on every block (almost!)
Venue– Hole in the wall style set up, this ain’t the Ritz people! Overall a clean quaint venue.
Service– again this isn’t Ruth Chris why are people expecting a fine dinning experience? The service is efficient and friendly. Most don’t speak fluent English so just point at the picture if you can’t communicate.
Everything I’ve ever tried here is out of this world! I even bring colleague and out of town guest to this spot and THEY LOVE IT!!!

Hunan Cuisine just introduced the Steamed Stuffed Bun! Tianjin style~ It’s really authentic and yummy! Note: need to call to preorder and minimum order is 30. But my wife and me ate 10 just in 1 meal…

Graving for spicy Chinese food. This the only restaurant I would go for authentic spicy Chinese food. The spicy pepper dish, the spicy beef and tripe dish, the mapo tofu dish, and the spicy fish pot are sooo good.
The spicier, the better. It really hit he spicy spot. Eat with rice, it is so delicious.
The people here are super nice and smiley. We love coming here for spicy authentic Hunan Chinese cuisine, and they open 7 days a week!
Tried their soy braised fresh sun fish today. Amy, the owner, fished it out of the tank right before me. And had her husband cook it in the back. It was delicious. Fresh fish is the way to go.
At the end, she gave us ice cream that she brought for herself. She was so nice and sweet.

I have had a really hard time finding szechuan cuisine in Honolulu, but this place wasn’t bad. One of my favorite dishes is fu qi fei pian, and theirs is not bad at all. It could be spicier, but it wasn’t bad. I also ordered the Hunan Vegetables which were great, and Mapo Tofu. I expected the mapo tofu to have some ground meat in it, but it was just tofu. I was a little disappointed but the flavor was still good.
The only thing that may be a little inconvenient about this restaurant is I don’t think the owners/​servers speak very much English. Luckily I speak enough Chinese to communicate with them, but when I asked about a food allergy they didn’t understand anything I was saying.

I had tried this place about 3 weeks ago. Food was real spicy but I liked it. I had spicy fish and farmhouse pork. Because I can rarely find a place that serves spicy chinese food like them. After 3 weeks, I wanted to try their spicy beef pot. I can’t seem to find their menu online so I called the restaurant to Wanna find out what kind of beef they serve in the spicy beef pot, (is it tendon, slice beef or brisket?) because I remembered 3 weeks ago, I have seen they serve tendon in a pot on the menu, too and I would like to confirm. A lady picked up a phone, I asked her in chinese“is your spicy beef pot serve with tendon, slice beef or brisket?” She replied «what the hell are you talking about in chinese?» I was shocked, but I explained to her I saw you have spicy beef pot on your menu and would like to find out if there is any tendon mix in it or what? She said «omg, spicy beef pot of course serves slices of beef»
Woman, I don’t have much knowledge about Hunan cuisine that’s why I’m asking you before I order!
If you can just explain to your customers patiently, maybe you will have more business during dinner rush hours. Seriously… I love the food here but I would never go back for that kind of service.

Sucks. Not Hunan food. Just typical plain Chinese. So disappointing since we know and love Hunan food. This place is right across the street from where we live — and we’ll never go back.

The breadth of Chinese cuisine is incredible and from my observations (growing up in a Chinese household) seems to have a strong restaurant and eating out traditions, ranging from dim sum to Peking duck to braised abalone, and also a parallel home cooking tradition, with dishes such as steamed spareribs with garlic black bean sauce (doh see tsung pai gwut). What you’ll find at Hunan cuisine is a lot of the comforting dishes from the home cooking tradition, although there are definitely fancier dishes on the menu also.
The food of Hunan is rustic, hearty, well flavored, and spicy. The dishes at the restaurant were definitely spicy, but none of us there felt that any dish was too spicy. The chills added well to the flavor profile of each dish, and no dish was spicy enough that it became a problem.
I would definitely focus on ordering from their Hunan specialties menu, which being their native cuisine, is what they’re best at. I had their cold noodles (liang main) a dish loved in Sichuan (a different province) and Taiwan. I didn’t like it, and looking back on that, ordering that dish there is like going to a New York diner and trying to order a Cajun dish. Focus on ordering their regional specialties, try some new foods, and branch out a bit!
We ordered cumin duck which is just like their cumin lamb, covered in cumin, dried chili peppers, and fresh chili peppers. The duck was chopped into pieces and had the bones (which keeps the meat more flavorful and moist). The meat was tender, and the skin on the duck was crisp. The dish wasn’t too oily and the flavorful spice mixture was extremely good to just throw on the rice.
The stir fried pickled green beans with minced pork is one of my favorite dishes I’ve had there. Green beans are lightly pickled, chopped, and mixed with minced pork and some chili oil and stir fried. These were delicious over rice! The light tangy flavor of the beans provided a nice contrast to the chili oil and the pork.
The bamboo shoots stir fried with pork slices were good, but not a stand out dish.
Their lo mein was also quite good. It was somewhat sweet, and tasted like their was also rice wine that was added when it was stir fried.
We also had their griddled chicken, which was a braised chicken with wood ear mushrooms, chills, and whole cloves of garlic. Delicious and tender!
Their Chairman Mao’s braised pork is pork belly that has been slowly braised till tender and flavorful and served with Shanghai bok choy (qing jiang cai or chang gong choy in Cantonese). It’s like a different version of koh yook.
I would also recommend their tiger skin peppers. They take bell peppers and fry it till the skin is toasted and lightly charred and then season it with black vinegar and fermented black beans. This dish was incredibly flavorful tasty, the vinegar brightening up the dish and the fermented black beans adding bursts of flavor.
Their cumin lamb, as other people have said, is great, you can get it as a rack of lamb or as diced lamb.
Their menu isn’t translated well, but Martha Cheng of Honolulu Magazine offers a great guide to the restaurant.
Also, for more information on the food of Hunan, Fuchsia Dunlop has written a great cookbook that I used to cook and understand the cuisine better.
Oh, and this place is BYOB.

**They are now open EVERYDAY, including Sundays!
(It’s listed as «Close on Sunday» on Unilocal!)
We ordered the tendon hotpot, cumin lamb, salt and pepper frog, salt and pepper tofu, house special fried rice, Eggplant with stringbeans, and one more pork dish but I forgot the name :/​
All was pretty tasty and spicy!
Reasonable price and smiley service
(It seems like only 1 server can speak English but overall we had a great time!)
Easier to find parking at night and most importantly, BYOB!!! I’ll be back :)

My partner and I stumbled across this place when looking for dinner options in downtown Honolulu. We give this place two stars because the food and service weren’t that great.
First, we asked the waitress about two of their appetizers… the mouth watering chicken and the five flavored beef, specifically what kinds of dishes these were because I couldn’t decide which one to order. She replied with, «chicken» for the first dish and «beef» for the second dish… no additional details about the ingredients, taste, etc. Really? So anyway, I decided on the five flavored beef since it sounded like it would be delicious and flavorful. Big mistake!!! How can you name a dish «five flavored beef» when it has no flavor at all? They should change the name name to «overcooked, no flavored beef» or something along those lines. Yuck!!!
Second, we ordered spring rolls which came with no dipping sauce. We asked for sauce, specifically sweet sour sauce, and the waitress seemed surprised that we would even think of asking such a question. She said that we could use soy sauce if we wanted to. Two questions. What kind of restaurant serves spring rolls with no dipping sauce? What kind of Chinese restaurant doesn’t have sweet sour sauce? Unbelievable!!!
Third, the waitress didn’t check up on any of the tables while we were eating and it took her forever to give us our check, at least 20 minutes after we took our last bite. Maybe its because we’re obviously lesbians? I definitely hope not.
Positives. The egg drop soup, orange chicken, and vegetables with white sauce were good and very tasty. We were also surprised that the waitress thanked us when we got up to leave. That was nice a nice gesture so maybe we’ll change our rating to a 2.5 instead of a 2.

Giving out 2 stars because they made me feel bad yesterday.
Me and my friends ordered 干锅鱼块/​干锅土豆/​小炒肉. When I asked what was the fish that they used? A woman (who’s usually there at afternoons) said I didn’t know what kind of fish was it. Just delicious was enough, why care about fish (who cares about what kind fish it was). That’s a very interesting and impolite answer. Next time on exam, if I get no idea for exact answer, can I just put «I don’t know the answer. Just writing this is enough, why cares detail?»
What’s more, if I get food poison by this unknown fish, can I just call my doctor and say «I’ve got food poisoning by fish! I don’t know which kind but why cares!»
以上。

When my mom told me that this was a place I’d have to try because I like spicy food, I was definitely intrigued. I came here for lunch the other day and upon first glance I’d have to say it had a different feel than other Chinese restaurants. Keep in mind that it isn’t your normal dim-​sum cart, ordering out of steamed trays, kind of place, Hunan is an area that has their own cuisine in China and they are known for their spicy foods!
My friend and I came here for lunch on a weekday and it was nice and peaceful, we didn’t feel rushed at all and the waitress came by many times to refill our waters. Their lunch specials were priced very fairly too! I ordered their Kungpao chicken which came with rice and egg drop soup for only $ 6.95. My friend ordered their Kungpao shrimp for $ 7.95 but it appeared like her plate had way less shrimp than mine had of chicken. I also glanced through their other non lunch special items and it also looked like everything else was priced just around the same and very fairly which is awesome for those of us who want to try new foods on a budget, haha.
Overall, if you like moderately spicy food this place would be awesome to try! I only got one of their items off their lunch specials list, but it looked like they had lots of other fun lunch and dinner dishes worth trying too. I’ll definitely be back :)

Normally would pass on Chinese food over say Thai but Hunan Cuisine is a must try if you love spicy foods with lots of flavor, some that you might be trying for the first time. Don’t let the bland décor or tough parking deter you. The cumin lamb by itself is worth it. Every appetizer we selected is interesting, esp the cold beef with tripe dish. Eggplant and string bean is really popular. I would go back to try more. This is the only place to get Hunan region meals on the island. It’s the only one needed.
Took off 1 small star because of the lack of décor and resulting average ambiance which is part of dining experience.

We’re trying new restaurants from reviews we see on Unilocal and this was a spot that caught our attention because it’s different. They are located in Chinatown where there is ample street and garage parking. When we went inside, we were surprised by how large the dining area was. Several tables were occupied with various dishes. The smells were delightful! Our service was very good and we came at an off time so that they weren’t too busy. It’s very clean inside and the AC was great on that hot day.
It was disappointing that the dishes we came here for were sold out or they didn’t have any that day. My bb really wanted the Cumin Lamb Chop but they didn’t have any. He ended up getting the Sauteed Lamb with Cumin Spice. I don’t really like lamb but the flavors were very good. He really enjoyed it and wants to come back for the Cumin Lamb Chop. His only complaint was that they gave so little rice with the dish. I order the Mapo’s Spicy Beef Noodle Soup and that was delicious .The soup base was good. All in all, the restaurant gets 3.5 stars. It lost ½ a star because they didn’t have what we came in for.

This was by far the WORST Chinese restaurant I have ever eaten at. I visited this place a couple years ago and am surprised I never gave them a review up until now, probably because it was so horrible that I blocked it out of my mind.
The restaurant itself is nothing to write home about… plain tables inside, nothing fancy but typical for a Chinese restaurant. But I didn’t come here for the ambiance anyway, I was here for the food. It was horrible. The mapo tofu was so tasteless and full of corn starch that it was like eating jello. Mapo tofu is a hard dish to screw up, even I can make it at home and I’m the furthest thing from a chef. But the lack of taste had me shocked and disappointed. Another dish was the eggplant, which should have been labeled salty eggplant because it tasted like they spilled the salt in there by the cupful.
I don’t think I’ll EVER come back here again.

OMG. Thank you Unilocal for showing me this place. I’ve been craving for SPICY. Not korean spicy, not agu ramen lv 5 spicy, REAL SZECHUAN SPICY. I only get to eat Szechuan food when I go home to china but now I finally found a place that sells Szechuan food!!!
The place is small and decorated just like a normal Chinese restaurant in china. Items on the menu are LEGIT, unfortunately the translation is a bit on the weak side. I was having a hard time debating between my all time favorite boiled fish vs the spicy griddle with pork intestine. We ended up ordering the boiled fish, green beans & farmer house lamb. All the dishes were well seasoned and delicious! The boiled fish was not what I’m used to (thicker and less soupy) but the taste was there. They definitely turned down the heat since not everyone can handle true Szechuan spices, thats where I deducted the 1 star — not spicy enough. The bill came out to $ 40 and we had plenty leftovers.
Walking out the restaurant completely satisfied and already planning my return!!!
Btw for those who think this is not authentic Chinese, you should prob stick with panda or chun wah kam.

«Got Rice b!7c4? Got Rice? got food, got soup, got spice?» That pretty much sums up Hunan.
Small space at the edge of Chi-​town. The menu is quite extensive. We had a hard time narrowing our choices but I was just oh so happy with them.
Like many of these reviews mention Hunan has quite a selection of spicy foods. Would recommend if you aren’t so big on the «spice»
Here’s the the list of the ticket items:
— Spicy Chicken
— Fried fish
— Singapore Noodles
— Lamb with thinly sliced bell peppers
All the dishes were delicious. The Lamb dish was tasty but very spicy. I really enjoyed the spicy chicken because it was different from anything that I’ve had. Fried fish was so good and not at all fishy, imagine salt and pepper pork chops but with fish.
Can’t wait to head back and try more things.

If you are tired of eating the same, typical (Americanized) Cantonese food here on Oahu, like me, then you need to come dine at Hunan Cuisine. Also, a great place for those who love the hot and spicy.
It’s a great rarity to find a Chinese restaurant that offers authentic dishes that you can actually find in China. At Hunan Cuisine, it offers mostly Hunanese dishes, of course, with many Sichuan dishes as well. Yes, there is a difference between the two! To be short, Hunan style is more on the make-​you-​sweat, hotter side, while Sichuan is more on the tongue-​numbing, spicier side (for more, research yourselves!).
The restaurant is located on the corner of Beretania and Smith Street in Chinatown. It’s a small place with just two large table, and several square tables. You’ll most likely need to wait during lunch hour, but it’s worth it!
One of my absolute favorites is the Beef Tendon hot pot with wood ear fungus. Both components were soft and tender, and they soaked up the to-​die-​for sauce nicely. The hotness of this dish was perfect, not overpowering at all. The sauce is incredibly pungent from the garlic, shallots, and chili peppers that your senses immediately perk up and your mouth beings to water once this dish arrives. Grab a side of plain rice (phở) noodles and pour this on top. AMAZING! On the specials menu (written all in Chinese) hanging on the wall, offers this similar dish, but with pork intestines instead, which was delicious as well. Both the tendons and intestines were fresh, cooked very well, and did not have that scent you typically get from offal.
The Hunan Chicken dish, stir fried with Broccoli, Bamboo Shoots, Carrots, and Water Chestnuts was delicious. It had a very aromatic pungency from the wok-​heat when it arrived at my table. The sauce was tasty with the right amount and consistency. The diced chicken was cooked perfectly and very uniform. Overall, a well-​portioned, simple, yet tasty and aromatic dish.
The Fried Fish Fillet set meal with Egg Drop Soup, bowl of Salad, White Rice, and ONE flowerette of Broccoli was odd to see here. It looked a bit like a Kaiseki set meal with all the little components. This was an okay dish. The soup was ladened with chicken bouillon, and the salad was lettuce with a sweet dressing. The fried fish was good though. It fried very well, and the meat was soft and steamy. The batter was crispy and seasoned well. I would eat the fish again.
The Scallion Pancake was okay. It was bland and a bit too thick for my preference.
Overall, I enjoyed the experience here. The food was amazing, and the main dishes were all cooked very well. The food comes out quick. The service is excellent. The menu can be a problem if you can’t read Chinese because some of the English translations do not make sense or it doesn’t describe the dish. Also, the specials board is all in Chinese too, and that’s where the good stuff is! You can ask one of the two servers. They are happy to translate, but listen carefully! The prices are on the cheap end, which is great with the quality and style of food they are serving.
Definitely an excellent place if you love hot and spicy food!

Why one star? How about because the cook and the waitress got into a physical fight right next to my table and then there was a cooked roach in my food?
I’m always looking for a new lunch spot downtown and was excited to try this based on the great Unilocal reviews. I walked in and there was one large party seated and a deuce that was leaving. The menu looked good and they had affordable lunch specials. I ordered the niu rou mein, Taiwanese beef noodle soup, from an older lady.
While I was waiting, the large party complained about their check to the younger waitress. I think she had to comp some of their food. This made the cook very angry and they started arguing next to my table. Then he suddenly shoved her violently past my table and she almost hit the ground. She turned around swinging and whacked him a good one. Nothing like domestic violence to destroy my appetite! But that’s not all, folks!
Luckily, or so I thought, the older server brought my gigantic, delicious-​looking bowl of noodles right then, which broke up the fight. I took a sip of broth and then pushed aside the noodles with my chopsticks. .. to find a well-​done roach nestled among the strands. Ugh! And I was so looking forward to eating my favorite Taiwanese dish!
I called the old lady over and showed her the roach. She didn’t say a word but took the bowl back into the kitchen and never came back out. The younger server was in the corner licking her wounds. I was just too disgusted to hang around so I left. No one noticed or even cared. Too bad; I have too much of a bad taste in my mouth to ever return.

A friend of mine recently wanted to go here… I never would have came here if He didn’t ask me. Its on the corner of Smith and Beretania and right in front of that super sketchy park. You can look for close street parking (no such luck) or park in the municipal lot nearby. I know this is a Chinese restaurant and Hunan is style of cuisine but I wasn’t really sure what to expect. The restaurant is small and the workers were actually very nice… as you know a lot of the hole in the wall authentic Chinese places don’t always have the friendliest service. However, they have the tastiest food. I have never had Hunan food, all my friend told me was that it’s a bit spicy and they use different spices.
Sooo I opened the menu and got a bit scared to be honest. Cow hells, beauty hoof, bullfrog?! Apparently the face I had was priceless according to my friend. Thankfully I found all the regular Chinese food items like Mongolian beef, mapo tofu, etc on the next pages. I will say this place does have a lot of items I have not seen in your basic Chinese restaurant here. I am unfortunately not brave enough to try them… braving the walk here was enough!
My friend went easy on me and ordered
green beans with eggplant and garlic and black bean sauce
— very tasty and the vegetable were cooked just right, not undercooked or soggy
mapo tofu
–how can you go wrong with mapo?
cumin lamb
— this was my semi adventurous dish… since I am not a huge lamb fan. It was pretty good though. The lamb was crispy outside and tender inside, covered with spices. I was worried it would be too spicy but it was ok… however its those creeper spices. I felt it in the back of my throat after eating a couple of pieces. Its not too overwhelming though. Not a lamb fan but I would eat this again… with rice and some water of course.
Overall… very tasty food and good service. I would brave the walk again… with someone of course, maybe with someone who is Chinese who could help me be a little more brave but not chicken heart brave!