I wanted to actually EAT at Hunan Garden, and we found out they stopped serving the full menu at 9:30pm. I rolled in about 9 and started to take the whole experience in. I’m probably going to ramble, but bear with me. It’s worth it.
Once you pick an entrance to the building (tucked away under a downtown skyway, the location is split into two areas. A divey restaurant that serves powerful drinks on one side – a divey bar that serves Chinese food on the other. I mean this place has the lights down lowwwww. Red-painted walls with Asian décor and yes, still somehow, you feel like you belong here. There’s no judging here. You just sit down, shut up, and eat or drink.
Then, you have the entertainment – “One Man Band” Ray Evangelista. One guy up the stage with a guitar and a rack full of accompanying top 40, classic rock, and old timey tracks. The guy can play that guitar too – I was honestly, quite impressed with his skills. The guy can also sing the heck out of these tunes. He’s got not music or lyrics in front of him and nails every song. He works the crowd a little bit and people are honest-to-god listening and paying attention and clapping and cheering when he starts and finishes songs. Perfect for this quickly-more-and-more-awesome establishment.
Then, you have the staff. Joe is either the owner or he runs the place like a boss. He’s the nicest and charming Asian man with long gray hair who doubles as chef and server, as well as host and drinking buddy. The bartender was a super friendly blonde woman who made sure I was taken care of and then made sure all the patrons were taken care of. Super nice, service with a wink, and knows how to pour a serious drink.
The restaurant seating area was closing down when I got there, but there were open booths in the bar area for me. I got a menu and figured out what I wanted. There’s a fantastic selection of appetizers, soups, and entrees on the menu and I decided to be gutsy and get something new – Plum Chicken and Shrimp. I also needed to check out some appetizers, so I got the Tibet Plate – egg roll, fried shrimp, hulla beef, paper chicken, and rumaki. The bartender told me she’d be right over, and I just hopped up from my table and went to the bar to order - save this lady a couple of steps and make her life easier. I had heard about the Volcano drink they have here, so I ordered one. She said, “You know that’s for four people, right?” I replied, “Yes, I do.” She smiled, nodded her head, and started mixing this huge bowl of rum, brandy, and pineapple juice. Awwww yeah.
The Volcano is serious. If you’ve been to Psycho Suzi’s in Minneapolis, you’ll recognize the Polynesian tiki bowl it comes in. There’s a spot in the middle that you pour Bacardi 151 into and then light it – that’s the volcano part. Then, I saw her pour the 151 all over the top of the bowl – intentionally – to make this thing even stronger than it already is. Like I said – a serious pour. Plus, this bowl of liquor is delicious. If you’re not going anywhere for a few hours, you should get one. They are head-spinningly inexpensive.
Joe brought out the appetizers and then scuttled back to the kitchen to finish the entrée. I dug into the various fried bits on the plate. The breaded and fried shrimp was decent. Nothing fancy, but fried shrimp is always good, as long as it’s cooked all the way through. The rumaki seemed to have an evil number of toothpicks in it (be sure to find them all before you bite into it), but had a decent flavor – although a little cold on the inside for my taste. If you don’t know, rumaki is bacon wrapped around chicken/duck liver and water chestnuts and then fried. Sometimes good, sometimes not good. The paper chicken was interesting and not like anything I’ve had before. It’s a piece of chicken cooked inside an aluminum foil triangle pouch – this was just ok and I had some concerns about the temperature of this one, as well. The Hulla Beef is a skewer of beef – nothing special, as far as I could tell. Good flavor, but not much pizazz. The egg roll was actually quite good and cooked perfectly. Good amount of ingredients on the inside and the shell was light and crispy. Plus, I think I got a bonus cream cheese wonton, which was really quite good. 
The entr̩e came out next and looked pretty good. It smelled even better. The plum chicken and shrimp is in a brown garlic gravy with a bunch of water chestnuts and caramel walnuts. Wow, this was better than I was expecting. The shrimp was good and not fishy, the chicken had no gristle or tough pieces, and there was plenty of rice to accompany the dish. I should have ordered it spicy, but even without the zing of peppers, this dish was a nice surprise Рespecially with the gamble I took of getting something new.
By the time I was finishing up dinner, the birthday party crew was rolling into the Hunan Garden, ready for drinking. Which is exactly what happened. A ton of appetizers were ordered and a Volcano or two. …And, Joe may or may not have done some shots with us…
People kept asking – why don’t we know about this place???? There were comparisons drawn to the Red Dragon in Upton Minneapolis due to the tiki drinks and Chinese food, but this place has more panache and fewer people. It also has some of the best signage known to man hung on the inside. I shall give you a few examples:
As people were wrapping up dinner, Joe brought us out some fortune cookies from his secret stash. These are only for the most fun customers.
We shut down the bar that night, which was awesome on so many levels. One of those levels was NOT the fact that I had go to work in 4 hours and then immediately drive 7 hours to Chicago the next day. Still, WORTH IT. And I look forward to going back. This place is a gem in the downtown St. Paul area, and so amazing just for the entire experience. Sure you CAN find better Chinese food if you wanted to, but why would you when you’ve got all this awesome rolled up into one incredible place. I’ll vote for Hunan Garden (though my phone keeps auto-correcting it to Human Garden) every time!
Happy birthday, D.Rough!!!
Top 5 things about Hunan Garden1. Atmosphere – without question. This place rules2. Staff – Joe and the awesome lady bartender were fantastic hosts3. “One Man Band” Ray Evangelista4. Plum Chicken & Shrimp5. Volcano drink for four
Bottom 5 things1. Cold Rumaki2. Cold Paper Chicken3. Downtown parking with some shifty characters roaming around4. Some people want to drink and be left alone… until they drink 8 too many and want to be your friend (amiright, Boom?)5. The bartender brought me 4 straws – as if I were going to SHARE that delicious Volcano with people. hahahahaha
www.hunangardenstpaulmn.com
The mac and cheese is still fantastic. We really like it here and are thrilled they use real cheese in it. Maybe not the best in the Twin Cities, but it IS the best on the Bar-B-Quest. The spicy potato wedges were fought over, once again. They are top notch and with the dipping sauce, you can’t stop eating them. Perfect again. The baked beans continue to be the best anywhere. Huge chunks of meat in the beans gives you some texture to chew on. They could be a little spicier (in my opinion), but they’re still some of the best baked beans I’ve ever had. The cole slaw again, was plain looking, but when paired with the ribs themselves, it is absolutely fantastic.
The pulled pork was pretty good, and we were all glad we tried it to see who it stacked up to the other food. With the right combinations of sauces Q Fanatic offers, you can get it dialed in just right. The pulled chicken, however, didn’t need any doctoring. It was great on its own. Much better than any of us expected, to be honest. Very tender and lots of flavor and seasoning. Perfect chicken.
Finally, the ribs were amazing as usual. The meat here just can’t be beat (or can it?). It falls off the bone but still has a good char on the outside that gives it some texture. Very little gristle and fat in these to contend with and you really enjoy every bite. Make sure you try the vodka pepper BBQ sauce – it’s the best one. This competition is getting to be TOUGH.
And of course, we had to get cookies. We weren’t playing around this time, since the “great incident of Bar-B-Quest” when HotGirlsBrother took too large a bite of LowVee’s cookie and she went ballistic. We made sure everyone had cookies immediately upon ordering (then I went back and got two more, since I wanted D.Rough to be able to share in the joy that are Q Fanatic monster cookies. I’ve decided I’m going to ask if they’ll sell me a few cookie’s worth of the dough, since I’m a huge cookie dough fiend. I’ll sign a waiver if I need to for the raw eggs – I just need that cookie dough in my face hole soon!
It looked like standard bar food, and tasted about what I expected. Nothing flashy or earth-shattering. Just a decent chicken sandwich with buffalo sauce and blue cheese, and then with a slice of pepperjack cheese on top. Again, not bad, but the lack of frying usually causes the slippery chicken breast to slide all over when you’re eating it. This one was no different. I’m not complaining, I’m just saying it’s pretty standard fare.
So, LowVee, Kevin, and HotGirlsBrother met me for lunch. It’s the middle of winter, but this place is still going strong. We ordered our usual orders – baby back ribs with cornbread and beans and coleslaw for all of us. I also got an order of potato wedges to start with, since I was the first one there. And, since they have 1919 root beer on tap, I and almost everyone else got a large glass of that. I love that stuff.
The wedges came out and still weren’t super crispy. I had asked the server if she could make them a little crispier than they normally are when I ordered, but it didn’t happen. They taste delicious, but they’re still floppy enough to have texture issues going on with them. They do have the dry rub seasoning on them, which is fantastic. So I’m hard pressed to complain about these. That being said, they didn’t last long on our table.
The baked beans were a variety of different beans. Some large, some small. They also have some pieces of meat cut up in the beans. Coupled with the seasonings they put in here, none of us were disappointed with the baked beans. They’re always really good here. 
The ribs – This is what you come here for. There is plenty of meat on the bones and there is a nice char on the outside. Not all the way across, but a considerable amount of bark. Nothing to complain about. This time around, the ribs were a little fattier than we’d had in the past (you can see the detail in the photo), but I know the fat flavors the meat. It was just not as melt-in-your-mouth as usual. Some bits of gristle to contend with. Don’t get me wrong – the flavor was still there and combined with our expert BBQ sauce chemistry wizard HotGirlsBrother, it makes for a realllllly impressive rack of ribs. Here's the recipe: two parts K.C., one part Ghost, and a splash of Carolina Vinegar. Bam!
First, the review of this outing at Q Fanatic. We’d been here recently in the semi-final round, but were anxiously looking forward to coming back. This time, we brought D.Rough, LowVee, HotGirlsBrother, and HotGirlHerself. I wasn’t worried – Q Fanatic can handle us. We got another one of those ridiculous picnic combinations they have that comes with a bunch of pulled meat. Then we also got a full slab of Baby Back ribs. All of these come with sides, so we got potato salad, cole slaw, baked beans, and two orders of mac and cheese. D.Rough was going to do her own thing today, so she ordered a Q-ban (pronounced Cuban) sandwich. Pulled ham and pork with mustard and cheese, and a side of the parmesan potato gratinee. And of course you’ve heard us rave about Q Fanatic’s cookies – today they had a change from the best monster cookies in the world. It was a bourbon walnut cookie. So we bought four of them. hahahaha
Potato Salad – Seriously, this is really amazing potato salad – some of the best I’ve ever eaten. I’m not a connoisseur, but it is honestly fantastic. Not too mustardy and the potatoes are bite sized and seasoned well. It’s a tough call whether it beats out Baldy’s potato salad.
D.Rough’s Parmesan Potato Gratinee – We all thought this was really good. D.Rough appeared to have hit one cold spot in the potatoes, but every bite I had was really delicious and hot. I ran into a few onions, which I wasn’t expecting, but honestly, the cheesy flavor was really good.
I didn’t get a review of the Q-Ban sandwich, mainly because I was shoveling ribs and mac and cheese into my face. When I stopped to breathe, I noticed the sandwich was mostly gone. I missed my chance, but based on the comments from D.Rough, the sandwich was quite good. Plus it was HER sandwich and I wasn’t technically supposed to be eating off of her sandwich. Hahahaha. It looked really fantastic, though.
The pulled meats: Delicious as usual. The pulled pork is really good, but it still doesn’t compare to the pulled chicken. I have never had that issue at a BBQ place before. The pulled pork always wins, but not this time. The chicken at Q Fanatic is really special. Great seasoning and flavor. The brisket here is also fork tender and super moist. Its goes great on a sandwich, as well. Which leads me right into the garlic buttered rolls… These little rolls are some of the best around. And to put this awesome pulled meat onto the roll is to make a little bite of heaven. Thankfully, we ended up with about 8 rolls between all of us. Dang, these are good.
The ribs: The ribs here are absolutely mind-blowing. Perfect bark all the way across the top of the really meaty ribs. Fantastic smoke flavor. No gristle and very little fat. Amazing vodka pepper BBQ sauce. I can’t rave about these enough. The meat comes right off the bone and you just can’t stop eating them. If we didn’t always order enough food for 15 people, I’m sure I would be able to finish a whole rack on my own. They’re delicious. They do have other sauces, including one or two at the table, but we all stick with the vodka pepper sauce. It’s wonderful.
I really wanted to like this place. I really really did. But I did not. 
Really?
