Traditional Food

The house-smoked Hunan bacon at Blue Willow, a new restaurant a brick’s throw from Trump Tower, is a real eye opener: glistening swatches of smoked pork belly, something like a less-sweet American bacon, stir-fried with scallions, slivered onions, green chiles, ripe bell peppers, and entire cloves of garlic. It’s like eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner all at once. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of Hunan cuisine — which comes from a province of lowlands, rivers and lakes, and sprawling communal farms (though individual plots are now worked by tenant farmers) — is food preserved by smoking, drying, and pickling, lending