KJ Kitchen Chinese Cuisine

Despite all the gambling, bright lights, and clubbing going on, Las Vegas is a great food destination.  There are great places on the Strip as well as off the Strip.  Last year, I made my first trip to Chinatown, a series of strip malls located around Spring Mountain Road.

The main attraction here are the unbelievable amount of restaurants around here.  Most of the restaurants serve Chinese food, but there is also Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Thai available.  Unlike where I live, where each strip mall has maybe 1 Chinese restaurant,  there are multiple eateries in each mall in Vegas.  The strip mall where KJ is located has 4 other restaurants.

On this particular night, my family and I decided to drive out to find a new restaurant.  The best way to gauge it was by whether there was a decent crowd inside.  We noticed that this place was packed, so we decided to give it a try.

After having been to a few restaurants in this area, it's safe to assume that it's customary that pork and dried vegetable soup is always served to start.  But there is an unusual addition in this.  Yes, those are chicken feet in the soup.  It adds a little bit of viscosity to the soup due to the collagen and cartilage.

Deer with Ginger and Scallion

What? A Chinese restaurant serving venison?  That's exactly what's going on here.  Cooked in the same way as beef, this is one amazing dish.  Even though the vegetables mask the smell of the meat, the taste is still uniquely venison.  The meat has a deeper and gamier flavor compared to beef.   was so happy to see this on the menu coming back from Utah, a place with so much game available, only very few are available during the winter time.

Frog in Clay Pot

These aren't just frog legs; it's the whole body.  The amphibian is decapitated, gutted, and hacked up before being placed in the clay pot with onions, shiitake mushrooms, Chinese sausage, oyster sauce, and soy sauce.  The Chinese name of this dish comes from the sound it makes while cooking.  There are legs in here but there is also the body on the bone.  This part of the frog contains different portions of the vertebrae, which requires much care when eating.

With this and last year's trip to Vegas, I have still only scratched the surface of this fine Chinatown.  And this is certainly a hidden that I won't forget.  I mean, where would anyone find venison served at a Chinese restaurant?

5960 Spring Mountain Road
Las Vegas, NV 89146