Taking into consideration all the factors that make a food definitively Southern, Sichuan dry-fried eggplant is a Southern dish. Not Sichuanese Southern, or Chinese Southern. It is a quintessentially Southern dish with Sichuan Chinese roots, representing the growing cultural diversity of a region that was once predominantly Indigenous, West African, and European.
The dish began its trajectory in 2006 when Peter Chang arrived at Tasty China in Marietta, Georgia. Chang, who’d developed a cult following by the early 2000s, was a famously transient chef who’d disappear once he established himself, only to start anew elsewhere.
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Equally well known for spotlighting Sichuan cuisine when it was relatively sparse in the Southeast and giving up his job at the Chinese Embassy in Washington after cooking for the president of China, Chang’s notoriety piqued customers’ interest in the man and his cooking. Although Tasty China had been operating for years before his arrival, the restaurant took off after customers tasted his unapologetically spicy dishes like mouth-watering bamboo fish, hot-and-numbing beef rolls, and twice-cooked pork belly.
And dry-fried eggplant, dubbed an off-the-menu gem by Atlanta Magazine, became a core entree item at Tasty China in the wake of enormous demand. Jen Zyman, an editorial contributor to Atlanta, recalled, “Peter became a larger-than-life character, (and) Tasty China became the place to be for any Atlanta food lover.”
It’s been years since Peter Chang’s exit from Tasty China, but his artistry left an impression. To this day, many of his signature dishes appear on menus in Atlanta and the metro area, executed with the knowledge, techniques, and recipes passed from one kitchen to the next as fast as industry workers move among restaurants.
Dry-fried eggplant isn’t confined to Atlanta. My search for the dish turned up nothing in major cities such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle. But dry fried eggplant surfaced wherever Chang set foot, mostly in random strip mall restaurants in small towns spanning from Maryland to Georgia, spreading so quickly it blurred the line between being known as his signature creation and being part of the overall Sichuan food diaspora.
While Chang deserves credit for originating the preparation known throughout the South, a version of this dish is common in the Shandong province of China. Shandong Fengwei Eggplant is dry fried but tossed in sauce, which makes it a bit soggier than the version for which Chang published a recipe in Richmond Magazine.
Typically, deep fried dishes are battered and on the heavier side. Sichuan dry frying, a two-step process, involves cooking the moisture out of foods before tossing them into a stir-fry, so vegetables crisp without soaking up excess oil. For something spongy like eggplant, this effect is achieved by dredging large strips in potato starch and deep-frying them until they develop a nearly impenetrable shell, before tossing in a wok with seasonings. The wonderfully balanced result is crisp sticks of eggplant with soft and silky interiors.
The seasonings are also dry, consisting of a liberal amount of numbing peppercorns, dried chili peppers, and cilantro. Combine various textual contrasts and flavors with the thrill of an endorphin high, and the dish becomes a multi-sensory experience.
Dry-fried eggplant is “very fun to eat,” according to Jason Chang (no relation to Peter Chang), chef-owner of Man Chun Hong off Buford Highway. He added that because of “that extra numbness at the end, some customers want extra peppercorns.”
Numbing peppercorns contain a hydroxy-alpha sanshool compound that produces a tingly sensation and imparts a floral, citrusy aroma. This compound is known to release endorphins, which is what Zyman suspects helped get Atlantans hooked on dry-fried eggplant.
“It’s such a powerhouse of a dish with the crispiness, the pops of cilantro, the hum of the Sichuan peppercorn,” she said, “It’s a very addictive thing to eat and it was also so singular in Atlanta; the Sichuan scene was so underdeveloped.”
Chef Jarrett Stieber of Summerhill’s Little Bear restaurant remembers first tasting the dish at Tasty China 2 when he was around 18 years old. “Never in my life had I experienced textures like that, or the sensation of so many chopped herbs mixing with numbing peppercorn and dried chili,” he said.
Yvonne Gu Khan, daughter of the owners of Gu’s Kitchen, says although eggplant with garlic sauce is more popular with Chinese customers, the restaurant offers dry-fried eggplant because non-Chinese customers ask for it.
We could say dry-fried eggplant is analogous to lemon pepper wings, despite the two local sensations having very different origin stories (and places in the national consciousness.) Dry-fried eggplant was a creation of Peter Chang’s, whereas lemon pepper wings emerged from countless wing shop customers adjusting their orders, but the effect was the same—once the preparation were established, Atlantans requested it at any restaurant able to whip up the dish.
Another similarity is restaurants don’t make the dish their whole personality; rather, it’s seamlessly incorporated into their menus. Just like lemon pepper is one of many wing flavors offered, dry-fried eggplant shows up in the vegetable section of Chinese menus, sometimes sandwiched between braised bok choy and stir-fried green beans.
Man Chun Hong, a Korean-Chinese restaurant off the Buford Highway corridor, offers Szechuan spicy fried eggplant alongside jjajangmyeon, a chewy noodle dish topped with umami-rich black bean sauce, and tangsuyuk, a sweet-and-sour pork. The eggplant first appeared on the menu in 2010 after non-Chinese customers requested it, according to the owner’s wife.
Over the years, some restaurants have riffed on the new classic. Gu’s Kitchen, a Sichuan restaurant owned by husband-and-wife veteran chefs Yiquan Gu and Qiongyao Zhang, also fielded requests from non-Chinese customers; they came up with Szechuan French fries, potato batonnets topped with numbing peppercorns, dried chili peppers, and cilantro.
While traditional French fries were always on the kids’ menu at Gu’s, the couple’s son-in-law had another idea. “My husband asked my dad to make a spicy version. ‘Oh, put it on the menu’ he said” Yvonne Gu Khan recalled of her husband’s eureka moment. The fun takeoff recalls Atlanta restaurants saluting lemon pepper wings with frog legs, pierogies, and pizza toppings.
Even non-Chinese chefs have paid homage to Sichuan cuisine’s influence on Atlanta by interpreting the iconic eggplant dish.
Staplehouse, a contemporary American restaurant located in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward, in July 2025 served a version with a side of ginger ranch dipping sauce. And in Fearless Innovation (What Unites Us), a cookbook highlighting Atlanta’s diverse restaurant scene, Jarrett Stieber shares a recipe where he tosses eggplant with salt cured peach.
The past few decades show that Southern food isn’t shaped solely by Indigenous, West African, and European influences. Along with fried chicken and barbecue, there are now regional mainstays like dry-fried eggplant, one foundational dish among many.
Chinese immigrants, along with people from places including Korea, Thailand, Laos, India, Mexico, and El Salvador, thrive here with resourcefulness and adaptability. They’re creatively utilizing the ingredients around them and broadening the definition of what Southern food is and can be.
Holy crap, Peter Chang! Thanks so much for your piece, Candy. I remember following him to least 2 DC-area restaurants in the early to mid 2000s.. That is a taste memory I can never forget. And now I’m just thinking about/salivating over eggplant.