Ethnic City - Ethnic.city: Good Luck Gourmet

When popular Sichuan restaurant Gu’s Bistro closed its Buford Highway location in March, the Chinese restaurant buzz around town shifted south to the new Gu’s Dumplings in Krog Street Market. Meanwhile, another restaurant quietly opened in Gu’s original space, Good Luck Gourmet. While Good Luck has kept most of Gu’s décor, the owners hail from the Shaanxi province, which lies northeast of Sichuan, and feature the seldom-seen specialties of their home region. Luckily for us, Good Luck’s Shaanxi cuisine is every bit as destination-worthy as Gu’s once was in the same space.

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Good Luck is a family affair, run by Hongli Chen and her husband/chef, Song Feng He. Chen says they worked for 11 years in restaurants in China, serving the same dishes they serve here in Atlanta. Service is friendly enough, though communication can be a challenge — you’re not likely to get much explanation on what type of fish that is in the whole fried fish with spicy bean sauce, or what distinguishes the red oil dumplings from the hot and sour dumplings (no worries, they’re both worth ordering).

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The menu starts with a full-page feature on the history of the restaurant’s specialty — Xi’an-style steamed mutton, also described as flat bread soaked in lamb soup ($18). It is a large, steaming bowl of lamb broth, studded with cubes of dense Shaanxi flatbread, sliced lamb, and a pile of chewy rice noodles beneath it all. The broth manages to be both delicate and intensely meaty at the same time, although small portions of chili sauce and sweet pickled garlic are served on the side if you want to add some zing.

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There are more than 100 items on the menu in all, almost all of them between $8 and $16. Given the focus on Shaanxi cuisine, much of the menu will likely be unfamiliar to the average Atlanta diner, though a good number of Sichuan staples are sprinkled in. Have you ever tried egg fried black fungus and leeks? It’s a fabulous plate of what is essentially scrambled eggs with sautéed mushrooms and young green leeks — a perfect, salty breakfast. Red oil pig ear and belly slices? The plate may not look so appealing, but the thin ear and belly slices bathed in a thin garlic-, vinegar-, and chile-packed sauce are chewy in all the right ways. Garlic fried leaf lettuce? When you’re ready to dial back on the heat, go for this subtle and lovely plate of tender greens. Dry fry trichiurus haumela? I’ll admit I wasn’t ready to go there.

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The Shaanxi specialty dubbed a Chinese pork hamburger (not on the printed menu, but marked in Day-Glo yellow paper on the wall) is strange but strangely addictive — a thin spread of finely shredded, greasy pork sandwiched between the same dense flatbread that’s found in the steamed mutton. It’s more Chinese Sloppy Joe than burger, and a few dashes of the chile paste on the table punch up the relatively mildly spiced meat. The Shaanxi-style cold noodles are even better. The firm and chewy rice noodles are doused with chile paste and garlic, and sprinkled with cilantro, bean sprouts, and strips of tofu-like wheat gluten. According to Chen, this is the only dish that sees MSG on the whole menu, and, yes, you can tell — the MSG creates an irresistible salty sensation as you stir all the elements together and slurp them up.

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Good Luck’s take on Sichuan staples like the meltingly tender dry fried string beans, or the Chengdu-style cold noodles and dumplings easily rival Gu’s. The red oil dumplings in particular are a must, swimming in an intricate but chile-intense broth, packed with juicy pork inside tender wrapping.

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You can play it safe and stick with dishes that sound familiar, or go all out and shoot for the unusual. Either way, Good Luck provides fertile ground for exploring the landscape of Shaanxi cuisine with many robust and highly satisfying dishes. Go with a group of friends, order more than you can possibly eat, and take in one of the most unusual Chinese menus in Atlanta.