Spicy Sichuan-Style Grilling Recipes from the Queen of Chili Crisp

When my business partner Stephanie Hjelmeseth and I began dreaming up Suá Superette , we immediately gravitated towards fast and flavorful foods for our busy schedules. We eventually landed on what you may know as Suá Superette today, a grab-and-go concept in L.A.’s Larchmont Village, with organic, healthy, and flavorful bites—what I describe as a Pret a Manger meets premium Sichuan flavors.

Without a doubt, summer is one of our favorite seasons at Suá Superette. It’s a time to showcase the bounty of California’s seasonal produce, highlight the smoky and intense flavors from the grill, and picnic outside with all our friends.

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In that spirit, the culinary team at Suá has created a medley of dishes, perfect for those hot days out in the summer sun, that you can easily make at home. These recipes are not only the best of what California has to offer—delicious, healthy, and organic—but they also highlight local producers and farmers we’ve fallen in love with. If possible, try to find local, organic produce at a farmer’s market or grocery store. My company, Fly By Jing , creates shortcut sauces for these dishes so you don’t have to find 10-year aged black vinegar or make your own chili crisp ; we did all the flavor balancing for you.

If you haven’t had a chance to visit us in Larchmont Village in the heart of Los Angeles, I’d recommend heading in as soon as you can. Now that the weather is hot, you’ll want to run to Suá and pick up our signature cucumber salad , broccoli crunch salad , cold sesame soba noodles , Kung Pao chicken kebabs , forbidden rice salad , grilled Chinese eggplant steaks with Sweet & Spicy Zhong Sauce, and a Jing Palmer, a delicious concoction of black tea with Meyer lemon! The best part? Everything’s organic!

Make It at Home

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Cold Cucumber Salad

Slightly spicy, deeply flavored, and extremely refreshing, this super simple cucumber salad is one of those welcome summer dishes that’s greater than the sum of its parts.

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Broccoli Crunch Salad

Raw broccoli chopped into tiny pieces is combined with aromatic vegetables and edamame, then generously dressed with an aioli spiked with Fly By Jing’s now legendary chili crisp.

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Cold Sesame Soba Noodles

Crisp vegetables, a spicy sweet dressing, and soba noodles combine to make a perfect, picnic-ready side dish.

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Forbidden Rice Salad

Earthy and nearly black forbidden rice is a dramatic foundation for this hearty but vibrant rice salad loaded with creamy edamame, vegan shiitake bacon, and crunchy vegetables. Erjingtiao chili adds fragrant, mild heat.

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Mala Margarita

From The Book of Sichuan Chili Crisp by Jing Gao, published by Ten Speed Press.

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Grilled Chinese Eggplant Steaks with Zhong Sauce

Umami-packed Zhong sauce is the sweet and spicy secret to this luxurious grilled eggplant dish that gets just the right amount of char from a hot grill.

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Kung Pao Chicken Kebabs

These chicken kebabs are marinated in crowd-pleasing Kung Pao flavors (don’t skip the fermented bean paste doubanjiang for the full effect). A garnish of basil and puffed rice provides a vivid finish and pleasing textural contrast.