Dining Review: Cheng Du Taste in Providence

Chong Qing diced chicken with hot chili peppercorns and Sichuan cucumbers. Photography by Angel Tucker

Recalling the last time you ate in a Chinese restaurant — rather than ordering takeout — is often an excavation into the memory. In the post-COVID restaurant world, some dining rooms didn’t even bother reopening as business remained brisk without a waitstaff. Cheng Du Taste, however, sits in the liminal state between a carryout window and a full-fledged restaurant. It also sits somewhere in the aesthetics of the 1970s, down the block from the original New York System and recognizable because of a tinted, waterfall-shaped glass wall. (“Is that an arboretum?” asked one confused diner. And after a pause: “Was that an arboretum at one point?”)

Early in any evening, it looks like the restaurant is closed for dining in. The only person in full motion is at the takeout counter, which remains frenetic at all hours. But behind a section of Saran-wrapped hot pot tables (and past the darkened arboretum), sit seven tables that are decades removed from modernity. This is the most unadorned example of a restaurant you might find in Rhode Island — and one most linked to the architectural style of Mike Brady. Wooden spindles stand upright over the tables and a moon-shaped doorway looks out onto Smith Street in retro fashion. 

Stir-fried lotus root and BBQ ribs with dry sauteed string beans. Photography by Angel Tucker

But it’s what comes out of the kitchen that rips the culinary curtains open, creating groupies of the people who will fill every table by 7 p.m. The demographic is impossible to nail down: College students in pajama bottoms and sweatshirts dominate the space, but parents toting preschool kids and disciples of the Beat Generation in berets are also keen to slide into a six-person booth for the night. There is no alcohol at Cheng Du — just tea, soda, and the occasional aloe vera juice. Even menus look like relics of a bygone era, with prices handwritten in the margins to mark the passage of time. But the menu is also eight pages long and offers an expansive study of Chinese history, largely unencumbered by American demands. 

That doesn’t mean the subdued staff won’t make concessions. When a Friday night diner in a baseball cap realizes there is no bar, he asks if he can retrieve a bottle of wine from his hockey bag to celebrate the end of the workweek. A bottle opener is quickly placed on the table and the Bruins fan pours red wine into teacups like it is tradition. 

But that’s where the domestic comfort ends and the culinary tour begins. Chili peppers are the base flavor: toasted, chopped and tossed liberally into sautes, soups and sauces. Many of the dishes are double-cooked and dry, which accentuates the heat but also provides a surface that is always crunchy and often blistered. It’s the Chinese equivalent of a wood-burning oven — all smoke, char and bliss. 

Sesame prawns. Photography by Angel Tucker

Hot and spicy crispy beef ($18.95) is a meandering study of heat, burning in some bites, mild and piquant in others. There’s no sauce to dissipate the texture and it’s dishes like these — dry string beans ($13.95), double-cooked fish ($18.95), hot pepper chicken ($16.95) — that feel entirely different than the sauce-soaked rice dishes that American kids grow up with. Even pork ribs ($8.95) — still old-school and vibrantly red — are dry roasted and pull away like meat from a Texas Roadhouse. 

There are plenty of plates, however, that thrive on sauces and soups. Steamed Shanghai little juicy pork buns ($10.95) are a variation on soup dumplings, served in a bamboo steamer with dipping sauce on the side. They sit like delicate paper, barely holding their seasoned broth inside and one can hardly blame parents who insist small children use their hands instead of skewering them with an errant chopstick. Plenty of stir-fry dishes translate as familiar: in garlic, black bean, Kung Pao — all expectedly saucy and sharp. Chicken in garlic sauce ($13.95) tastes like everybody’s first favorite Chinese food and crunchy sesame prawns ($15.95) in a sweet thick sauce would sell anyone on shellfish. 

But Cheng Du is defined more by its unusual ingredients and the sense of exploration that dictates the menu. Pig’s feet, intestine and tripe find their way into chili sauce and soup, though not every offering asks diners to be quite that daring. 

Steamed Shanghai juicy pork buns. Photography by Angel Tucker

The spotlight also shines on less celebrated vegetables — lotus root, cabbage, yams and even the humble potato, which — shredded and tangy — makes up an entire dish. Even the Cheng Du style green bean noodle ($8.95) is a novel undertaking for an American audience: thick, glassine noodles with a texture only vaguely similar to mochi, sit cold and slippery in a vinegar-spiked soy sauce. If you long for something different, but lack the mettle to go all out, order the Sichuan cucumber ($8.95) — which is nothing more than a sesame-based salad, but it’ll make you wonder why every restaurant specializing in fried food doesn’t temper it with bright, acidic greens. 

If there’s a dish with one foot in both continents, it’s the totally unexpected candied sweet potato and taro ($16.95) which will only arrive at the end of a meal. Cylindrical wedges of root vegetables come fried and stacked in a syrup intensely similar to a candied apple coating, molten at first and then cooling into a tacky, teeth-coating glaze. It tastes like carnival food — a full-throated celebration of sugar that must be eaten immediately, uncorrupted by takeout containers that will ruin its crystallized veneer.

That being said, there’s something unfair in the analogies to American staples — which are the derivatives here and not the predecessor. It’s human nature to categorize things into folders formed through experience and perception. But it’s more exhilarating to let life come to you on its own terms, free of comparison or expectation. Sometimes Cheng Du Taste approaches you like an old friend but, more often, it’s like an exuberant tour guide escorting you into the unknown. I’d argue that’s the very best kind of eating — one that reveals and broadens our view of the world. In this case, the revelation comes in unexpected packaging, but some of the most valued gifts often do. 

The interior of Cheng Du Taste. Photography by Angel Tucker

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CHENG DU TASTE

495 Smith St., Providence, 729-5699, chengdutasteonline.com 

Open for lunch and dinner Thursday–Tuesday. Wheelchair accessible. Lot parking. 

Cuisine: Classic Chinese and Sichuan.

Capacity: Forty. 

Vibe: Wood paneling meets the city of Chengdu. 

Prices: Appetizers: $1.95–$18.95; entrees: $10.95–$39.95; dessert: $8.95–$16.95. 

Karen’s Picks: Steamed juicy pork buns, soup of any kind, everything with chili peppers, Sichuan cucumbers, sesame prawns, candied sweet potato and taro.