Today’s Special: Zhang’s Squirrel Fish Dish

Chef Tony Zhang’s squirrel fish is traditional dish with an individual spin: a boneless deep-fried sea bass with pine nuts, green beans, corn, carrots, and a homemade fruit sauce, a traditional dish with an individual spin. It also happens to be his boss’s favorite dish .

Zhang, who descends from a family of well-known chefs, serves this top dish at owner Hu Ping Dolph’s restaurant Taste of China on Chapel Street. 

“I’m big on seafood,” Doph said said. ​“I always want to show people that we eat a lot of seafood too. Some people just think Italian restaurants and French restaurants serve some seafood, but Chinese restaurants serve good seafood too.”

Dolph aims to introduce customers to Chinese culture through food. ​“I don’t want to do this to only make money. I want it to be authentic to show my culture. I show my food, I show my personality.”

Take-out and delivery orders will prove crucial to the ability of local restaurants like Taste of China to weather the pandemic during the coming months as Covid-19 cases climb and cold weather sets in. Call ahead at (203) 745‑5872 or click here to order Tony Zhang’s squirrel fish, or other dishes, online for pick-up (954 Chapel St.). Click here to order online delivery. The restaurant is open 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 12 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. on Sundays. 

In addition to New Haven’s Taste of China, Dolph owns Steamed on Whitney Avenue and a handful of other Chinese restaurants across the state. She works with the chefs from each restaurant to design different menus and even different recipes for each location.

Typically, Chinese cuisine is classified into four main categories based on geographic region: Shandong Cuisine（鲁菜), Jiangsu Cuisine (淮扬菜), Guangdong Cuisine（粤菜), and Sichuan Cuisine（川菜). Taste of China uses the cooking techniques and seasoning of Sichuan cuisine.

“Starting in China 30 years ago, Sichuan became very popular for restaurants because it has a lot of flavor,” Dolph explained.

To capture the authentic flavoring associated with Sichuan cuisine, Dolph imports seasoning through Boston from China. She also orders fresh vegetables from New York. ​“This is what people can feel is different, people can taste it’s different.”

That freshness is highlighted by the distinctive squirrel fish. To prepare the dish, Zhang takes out all the bones and cuts the fish meat to create a diamond-shaped pattern.

The fish is then deep fried and finally covered with a special sauce Zhang makes himself.

The sauce is sweetened with orange, lemon, and pineapple juice. 

Dolph next presented Taste of China’s Mongolian beef. Chef Zhang uses brown sugar on top of the beef. He mixes in caramelized onions and scallions and adds dried chili peppers for an extra kick. ​“After that your mouth is fresh and sweet,” Dolph said.

She brought out the Mongolian beef for me to bring home specifically because she remembered it’s my dad’s favorite dish. Dolph makes a point of remembering what each customer’s favorite dishes are without any notes to help her remember. ​“Even if you come two, three years later, I know my customers and what flavors they like. People ask me how I remember it. I always remember because this is my job!”

Dolph said she also always helps customers order food and cocktails based on their favorite flavors. ​“I don’t want people to all order food with the same flavors. I want you to order some kind of meat to pair with different vegetables and seafood.”

Taste of China’s vegetable dishes, including their string beans, bokchoy, and eggplant, help diners cleanse their palate between meat and seafood. Taste of China also offers delicious vegetarian dishes including steamed vegetable dumplings, scallion pancakes, and Chengdu Rice Bean jelly. (Patrons can order from a separate vegan menu.)

Dolph served their peapod leaves, which she remembered is my mom’s favorite. The preparation is simple, as the leaves are cooked only in vegetable oil with garlic sauce. ​“It’s a very special fresh veggie, it even smells fresh!” Dolph said.

Along with authentic flavors and traditional recipes, at Taste of China, presentation is key. Dolph and her husband often eat out to report back or bring her chefs to observe food presentation at different restaurants. ​“Whenever we travel, the first thing we do is go look at restaurants to see how they’re different. We want to see their recipes, decorations, and food presentation,” she said. She has most closely studied food presentation at French restaurants. ​“It looks like art, and people take pictures. They say they don’t even want to touch it because it’s too beautiful. I love that and I want my food to look like that.”

Dolph is from Nanjing, which is about three hours from Shanghai. Her husband, who was her language teacher when they met, brought her to the United States after they got married.

Soon after she moved, Dolph concluded Connecticut was in need of authentic Chinese cuisine. She dreamed of opening her own restaurant.

“I always felt that in life you should dream what you want to do,” she said. So, after two years of settling in, Dolph opened the original Taste of China restaurant 20 years ago in Clinton.

Taste of China quickly became a hit in Clinton. New Haveners and friends from Yale urged her to open a restaurant in New Haven. After 12 years, Dolph decided she was ready and opened Taste of China on Chapel. ​“We finally decided to come to New Haven for the community, for Yale, because it was busier with more traffic, and it was a totally different area from Clinton.”

As Taste of China was thriving, Dolph had a new idea: ​“I wanted to bring more of my culture’s food. When I was young we had more healthy appetizers and finger food and everything was steamed.” In 2016, she opened her restaurant Steamed, which includes more dumplings, bao, and noodles, in Madison. She opened two more Steamed restaurants, in Middletown and the New Haven spot, in 2018.

“For me the restaurant business is my cause and purpose.”

When Covid hit New Haven in March, Dolph did not shut Taste of China down. She met with her employees to plan how to transition to socially distant take-out orders instead. ​“We wanted to stay open, but we had to be careful like we were preparing for battle.”

Throughout the spring Dolph donated trays of rice, meat, and seafood from Taste of China to the ICU at Yale New Haven Hospital. ​“We donated a lot of food because it’s a community. We always feel that we are together. We were not thinking about money anymore and how much we had to make. We just wanted to share the love together in this time.”

“We’re still standing here and so hopeful. We feel that spring is coming and I really appreciate New Haven and everyone who is ordering from us.”

Previous coverage of recommended take-orders to help keep local businesses survive the pandemic:

• Today’s Special: Haci’s Napoletana Pie
• Today’s Special: Fred & Patty’s Brie On Baguette
• Today’s Special: Nieda’s Moist Falafel
• Today’s Special: Qulen’s Vegan ​“Wings”
• Today’s Special: Aaron’s Peruvian Rice Bowl
• Today’s Special: Singh Bros.’ Chana Kulcha
• Today’s Special: Grandma’s Chicken Soup
• Today’s Special: Woody’s Steak & Shrimp
• Today’s Special: Shilmat’s Yemisir Sambusa
• Today’s Special: Arjun’s Vegetarian Manchurian
• Today’s Special: Mohammed’s Bhel Poori
• Today’s Special: Francesco’s Tortelli
• Today’s Special: Seikichi’s Sushi
• Today’s Special: Ketkeo’s Khao Poon
• Today’s Special: Mike Fox’s French Toast