💙💙 | $ | Chinese two-course lunch specials—e.g. pork with chili pepper, ma po tofu—come with soup and rice, and they’re priced like gifts, under ten dollars a person. But don’t stop there: a lot of the more authentic à-la-carte dishes at Oriental Taste are fire. Their cumin lamb, for example, is one of my favorite things to eat in the world. Also great are boiled beef, boiled fish, and juicy, golden-fried “Special Sichuan Spicy Chicken,” tossed with crispy red chilies. They’re open late, too.
Easily the best Chinese restaurant in Northampton, Oriental Taste is a simply decorated space with high ceilings. I like the tables by the front windows, from which you can watch the bustle of Main Street.
The menu’s real firepower is found in a section called “Chef’s Special Dishes.” A great party dish that feeds two or three people is “spicy grilled whole fish,” which comes to the table bubbling in a giant metal tray with a burner under it, swimming in a red-colored broth with generous portions of cabbage, lotus, and other Chinese vegetables.
The kitchen makes great use of ma la, and you can’t go wrong with any menu item that includes the word “Sichuan.” Beef in hot and sour pickle broth and dry-braised dishes hit the spot, as does red-cooked pork, a Taiwanese specialty of rich, fatty belly meat slow-braised and deeply infused with flavors of soy sauce and five spice.
Oriental Taste is also one of the city’s best-value lunch options. Every “Chinese Lunch Special” rings in at under ten dollars, including soup and rice. Pork or beef with wild chili. There are plenty of great vegetarian options on this list, including ma po tofu with Sichuan peppercorns and shredded potato with chili—China’s answer to hash browns.
There’s also decent sushi and pan-Asian here, if that’s what you’re craving, but you’d be missing out on the really good, authentic stuff.
The wine list is not broad, but it’s one of the best values in town. There’s not a single bottle over $30, and everything is marked up to no more than about twice what you’d pay in a wine store—a departure from the 3–4x that you’ll see at so many restaurants.
