When we got to Los Angeles last summer Hunan Mao was all the rage. On account of my aforementioned hype-phobia we skipped it and on Sku‘s recommendation got our Hunan fix at Hunan Style instead. And that was a very good meal. This year we decided to give Hunan Mao a go—after all how often do you get to eat at a restaurant named for a dictator whose policies killed tens of millions of people by starvation?

It’s a large, bright restaurant—and while it didn’t fill up (we were there for lunch on a Friday) they seemed to be doing steady business a year after all the hype. We were joined again by the same set of food forum friends who ate with us at Hunan Style, and had a good time eating and reminiscing about the days when food forum politics took up too much space in our lives, and getting some scuttlebutt from one member of the party who works in the food industry in LA. Continue reading →