Spicy Master

Fans of spicy foods have no shortage of great options in Irvine – for instance, a single plaza on Culver includes such noteworthy options as Fire Wings and Spicy City – so it’s not exactly surprising that another plaza has emerged as a hot spot (ahem) for spice fiends. Joining already established hot pot/dry pot restaurant YGF Malatang and Sichuan sauerkraut fish chain Yonny at the Chinese restaurant-heavy Jamboree Promenade, Spicy Master initially offered a smartphone-based menu of mostly rustic, Jianghu-style Sichuan recipes that were over-the-top in spices, peppers, and/or oils, ideal for UCI students and anyone else with little concern over their heat or lipid intakes. But across multiple visits, the young restaurant’s menu has continued on each occasion to expand and improve, adding more low-spice options that are nonetheless bold in flavor and interesting in texture.

Seemingly deliberately, the English version of Spicy Master’s menu mixes intimidation and mysticism to hint at the potential pain that awaits spice-adverse customers: from “Can’t Eat Spicy Chicken,” “One Sword Seals the Throat” (pork stomach, $39) and “Ghost Fire Brain Flower” ($25) to “Heaven Sword Overlord Rabbit” ($39) and “Bandit Style Pork Liver” ($23), very few of the choices available on the smartphone-based ordering system offer comfort to the meek – this is not a place to bring anyone intimidated by Chinese food generally or spicy foods specifically. Many dishes either explicitly reference “fresh pepper,” pickling, blood, or chili sauce, while others (dry pots, Boss Bang Bang Chicken) merely include photographs of meat heavily garnished with dried chilis or resting in pools of chili oil.

Not everything is super spicy, though, as Spicy Master offers some basic fried noodles ($15), fried rice ($15), vegetable dishes ($17), and big soup bowls ($16 to $27) as milder options. “Fish Fragrant Eggplant” ($17) is a particularly great choice for the spice-adverse, a pile of thinly sliced fried eggplant pieces without batter, coated in a soy-rich, lightly sweet and barely spicy sauce with sesame seeds. A newer dish, “Sour and Spicy Fern Root Noodles” ($14), arrives as a large plate of wonderfully chewy, gray-purple, medium thickness noodles in a soy/vinegar sauce – again, with relatively little spice, safe for gentler palates and truly fun to chew and slurp. By comparison, Chengdu Zhajiang Noodles ($15) combine more generic wheat pasta and ground pork with a peanut-less but otherwise dan dan-style soy and red chili-based sauce; while it’s one of the menu’s milder options, it’s also pretty boring, so we’d recommend skipping this dish in favor of something more distinctive.

That’s not difficult here: Having gone out of our way to try new items on each visit, we’ve almost always been either pleased or legitimately impressed. One of our favorites was the Burnt Pepper Tofu Salad ($15), a sliced block of silky tofu topped with roasted and minced spicy green peppers, scallions, and sesame seeds, all soaking in a pool of green pepper oil. The creamy tofu was so dense that it didn’t absorb the oil – it ran off as droplets of spicy seasoning, leaving the dish more refreshing and balanced than greasy or heavy. As fans of spicy foods, we found the spice level here to be nice rather than overwhelming, and well offset by the milky tofu. On a later visit, we ordered Smashed Baby Cucumber ($13), expecting a Din Tai Fung-sized tiny dish of neatly cut and stached slices, instead receiving a generous mountain of garlicky, perfectly vinegared and lightly red chili-ed chunks that two of us could share without arguing over who got the last slice.

If you need to cool your tongue, Spicy Master’s collection of desserts includes multiple types of ice jellies, tofu puddings ($6), fried rice cakes ($13), and coconut milk balls ($14). Having tried all of the ice jellies, we particularly loved the Sandy Brown Sugar version ($5), a great deal for a bowl of what others have offered as “rain drop jellies,” clear, cold gelatin topped with a sugar syrup, hawthorn, and nuts. Subsequent orders of Passion Fruit Ice Jelly ($6, with passion fruit syrup and seeds, lychee jelly and dried berries), Roselle Ice Jelly ($6, with full lychees and hibiscus flavors), and Osmanthus Fermented Rice Ice Jelly ($5, with raisins and a small scoop of fermented rice) each proved to be compelling alternatives; pick the topping that interests you the most.