What happened to Fresno’s Dai Bai Dang? This new restaurant in River Park is replacing it
River Park’s newest restaurant opens Monday.
Longtime popular restaurant Dai Bai Dang has said goodbye after about 20 years, its owner retiring. The restaurant in a prime spot near the theaters is reopening as Spicy J’s Specialty Chinese Cuisine.
This is a Chinese restaurant, but it’s not like the typical Chinese restaurants around town. The flavors are bold (and not always spicy). It has a fat menu serving Szechuan, Cantonese and Mandarin cuisine, much of it with an American twist.
And there’s frog on the menu. More on that in a moment.
The restaurant is now owned by Jason Lin. He also owns J Pot Mini Hot Pot & Bar, which opened in April in River Park serving bubbling bowls of soup kept warm with a flame at your table. He also owns Hino Oishi Teppan & Japanese Cuisine at Campus Pointe and his family owns Lin’s Fusion.
He’s also opening a ramen restaurant this spring called Ramen Hayashi at Herndon and Fowler avenues in Clovis.
Spicy J’s
Spicy J’s official grand opening is Dec. 23, but it plans to open limited hours starting Monday, Dec. 9. It will be open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for lunch and dinner starting at 5 p.m.
Lin has been running the restaurant as Dai Bai Dang for over a year. Its owner, a friend, asked Lin if he wanted to take it over when she retired, he said.
He bought the business and has remodeled the entire restaurant. It now has a dining room with a whole new look, a remodeled kitchen and a bigger bar serving mixed drinks and beer.
But back to the food.
“Don’t get fooled by the name,” Lin said. “It’s not all spicy food.”
You’ll find familiar dishes like orange chicken and chow mein on the menu.
But you’ll also find lamb that’s wok fried with cumin and Chinese spices. There’s a big seafood section on the menu, with a Chinese twist on Cajun crawfish, dim sum and kao yu, which is whole, grilled fish.
There are gluten free, vegetarian and vegan options on the menu and a low-calorie section dubbed Skinnylicious.
Frog, Szechuan flavors
One of the restaurant’s signature dishes is the dry pot, served in a metal dish with a flame underneath to keep it warm. Diners choose chicken, shrimp or frog that’s cooked with potatoes, bean sprouts, leeks, onions and lotus root.
That lotus root is artful, its natural shape looking a bit like a pinwheel, with a mild taste like a bamboo shoot.
The fried frog – not just the legs but small chunks of the body too – tastes like chewy chicken. Mostly, it takes on the flavor of the Szechuan spices it’s cooked in.
“When I went to China with my wife I was intimidated to try it too, but I tried it and I like it,” Lin said.
Those Szechuan flavors come from the region that Lin’s family is from (he moved to the U.S. when he was 6). They are brighter and bolder than your typical Chinese restaurant fare.
Szechuan peppercorns and lots of bright red chilies are used generously here. The restaurant’s signature fish sauce has 20 herbs and spices in it. It takes five hours for the restaurant to grind a batch of spices for cooking.
The oil they cook with is infused with chile peppers in house, big splashes of it added to woks with lots of flame.
“Fresno is so diverse,” he said. “The stuff I like I want to be able to share it and bring it to Fresno.”
