Last updated: February 10, 2022

International Eats

The restaurant: Shared kitchens are a great way for restaurants to save money on rent and labor and still produce great food for an eager, hungry public. Located on a rapidly transforming section of Thrift Road near Freedom Drive, Sun’s Kitchen is literally just that: a kitchen. Walk through the front doors of The City Kitch, a shared kitchen space that is also home to several other eateries, into a small antechamber of sorts and you’re there. To the left is a small room with tables for those who just can’t wait to get home to eat. Your order will be placed on a designated shelf labeled Sun’s Kitchen. You’ll probably be among a crowd of food couriers waiting to take hungry customers their food. There’s a small, square window in the back wall of the waiting area if you want to see the cooks at work. Looking through it, I feel like I’m peering behind Oz’s curtain, except this time the magic is real. That leads me to my only real complaint with Sun’s Kitchen: I wish it was more than a kitchen. There are few things more fulfilling in this world than to sit down at a restaurant table to enjoy a delicious meal with people I love. I hope one day I can do this at Sun’s. 

The cuisine: On a trip to Vietnam during college, I got into a rather heated argument with one of my professors about Mexican versus Chinese spice supremacy. There might have been Bia Hanoi beer involved. It was late. We were at a bar named Apocalypse Now. I was adamant that the numbing qualities of Sichuan peppercorns could never compete with the likes of the jalapeño, habanero, mirasol, or chilhuacle.

Readers, I was wrong. Or rather, I was thinking about the entire subject in the wrong way.  Sichuan peppercorns achieve something entirely different than their Mexican counterparts: a tongue-puckering, tingling sensation that lingers long after each bite. Your mouth goes numb, but that isn’t the whole story. It’s almost as if your tongue is fizzing and your taste buds are so scrambled they don’t know what signals to send to your brain. A zesty, almost earthy, sensation envelops and invades every square inch of your mouth the way cigar smoke might. It can be a little overpowering for certain people, but once you embrace the numbing effect, it has an almost drug-like quality of enjoyment to it. Sun’s Kitchen takes that Sichuan spice and adds it to traditional street foods of the Chinese capitol, Beijing. 

Our must-order: This menu really doesn’t have any misfires or duds, but there are a few dishes that have permanently elbowed their way into my taste memory. The dumpling flight is the best way to start any meal. The flight includes ten dumplings, two dumplings each of five varieties: pork and chive (white), beef and carrot (yellow), chicken and mushroom (pink), shrimp and chicken (violet), and vegetarian (green). A close second for top appetizer are the ma-la wontons. Stuffed with pork and scallions and sitting in a bath of sichuan peppercorns  and chili oil, these traditional Chinese dumplings also have enough garlic to season a large pot of Sunday marinara.  Though all their skewers are interesting in texture and flavor, their tofu skewers elevate that negligible ingredient to new heights. I rather look down on tofu, an ingredient that resembles pale, lifeless styrofoam and reminds me of Soylent Green. It’s fine in a curry or a pad Thai, but only because it can hide among the menagerie of ingredients. Sun’s Kitchen’s tofu is no wallflower; it’s front and center on skewers, crispy and coated with spices. They’re even better when dipped in the ma-la Sichuan sauce. The ma-la chicken is essentially a giant pile of dainty, crispy chicken nuggets covered with fistfuls of Sichuan peppercorns, dried chilis, and sesame seeds. A tad on the dry side, you’ll likely want to get a side of their scallion garlic sauce, or you can double down on the numb and get the Sichuan sauce. 

Why we go: In some quarters it has become fashionable to bemoan the authenticity of Chinese-American cooking. I’m not one of those people. Who am I to tell a Chinese immigrant grandmother that her cooking would never be found in cities like Taipei or Shanghai? Still, it is refreshing to see a Charlotte restaurant doing authentic Beijing street food instead of falling back on the tried and true formula of Americanized Chinese. The always dependable Ho Ho Cherry House might be a five minute drive from my house, but they’re not serving food you could find at midnight on a Beijing street corner. Charlotte’s share of the Chinese diaspora is slim when compared to the likes of New York or Los Angeles, so when you can find a place doing something totally unique in the food scene, you have to support it. So, when it’s a Friday night, I’ve had a long week at work, and my baby boy has finally gone to bed, I’m getting in my car and heading to Sun’s Kitchen. The car ride home is always a lesson in patience, the smell of their dumplings, wontons, and ma-la chicken is an intoxicating perfume.