Fried Chicken Cubes with Hot Pepper ($8.99) looked intimidating since the dark meat cubes were buried in scallions and flame-red bird’s eye chilies, which are several times more pungent than the jalapeño on the Scoville scale, but still way less devastating than the jalapeño. I wasn’t in the mood to set any spice records, and these chilies imparted more than enough flavor to the juicy yardbird.

Sautéed String Green Bean ($6.99) seemed like a tame choice, but they turned out to be terrific, flavored with onion bits, garlic and crumbled pork.

Chung King’s offerings can get pretty wild, including sheets of pig kidney ($8.99) that were scored to allow for a flavor infusion from the shower of scallions and multi-colored pickled peppers.

Boiled Fish Slices in Hot Sauce ($8.99) consisted of luscious halibut fillets submerged in a lip-stinging chile sauce and topped with a hidden cache of scallions and pungent minced garlic.

Sheets of Chinese Bacon ($9.99) were smoky and salty, almost like a Southern-style country ham, tossed with crunchy turnips and a liberal helping of scallions and leeks.

We finished with the most ferocious dish of the night: Beef with Tofu in Small Pot ($10.99), loaded with creamy white sheets of tofu, thin strips of beef, crunchy vegetables like cabbage, and of course plenty of chilies. In this case, the chilies completely permeated the broth. There was no way to sidestep the pods, which is possible in a dry dish.