It is an article of faith that some of the best and often unheralded food can be found in strip malls. So it was not surprising recently to find an excellent Sichuan noodle shop just off Route 40 in Ellicott City, next to a dentist’s office, at the side of a parking lot the size of a lacrosse field.

Pepper House, open since April 2021, is the first restaurant from a couple with no background in the restaurant industry but a great love of traditional Chinese food. Yuan Shen, who is from Hunan, runs the front of the house, while her husband, Frank Liang, is the chef. Liang is a native of Chongquing, a sprawling city in southwestern China known for its fiercely spicy noodle bowls, in this case packed with bok choy, scallions, a golden-yellow egg, and plenty of house-made chile oil (glorious stuff that you can—and certainly should—buy by the jar).

The menu is a highly curated one of noodles both with and without soup, various dry pot and hot pot dishes called “malatang,” dumplings, a few hot dishes (the crispy fish is excellent), and some smaller cold dishes (“mouth watering” chicken, mung-bean jelly). Most of the dishes are doused with chiles in one form or another, and many are charged with the Sichuan pepper corns that produce the numbing effect called “mala.”

That said, thanks to Liang’s deft touch in the kitchen, the food is not overwhelmed by heat but by flavor. Surprisingly, Liang was not trained in food but in music: A professional opera singer, he still teaches students, who come to the restaurant to take classes. And, when the restaurant isn’t busy, he plays the piano that sits against the wall in the small dining room, sometimes accompanying himself. (A tenor, he’s fond of Pavarotti.)

The small restaurant, which was previously an office, is arranged around two communal tables and a counter, atop which sits a huge glass vat of that house chile oil, like beautiful crimson artwork.

Laminated menus display one side in English, the other in Mandarin. There’s also another menu with dishes that
take longer to make—Mongolian lamb, sour cabbage duck soup, braised pork belly—and can be ordered ahead for parties or feasts.

The thin, wheat noodles that fill the various bowls come from a New York vendor; they’re supple and chewy, the perfect foil for the soups and sauces. Along with the Chongquing noodles, Liang makes a terrific Chengdu iteration of dan dan noodles, a popular dish he prepares with pork and both dried and pickled greenery and is meant to be well-mixed before consumption—something that Shen often sees to herself, shortly after delivering the bowls.

The dumplings are also unusually good: Hefty, pork-filled, and topped with the house chile oil, they’re a dream version of the wontons invariably found on Chinese menus.

“Chile sauce and mala are the soul of Sichuan cooking,” says Shen, who notes that, when she and her husband were first working to open their restaurant, they ignored friends who advised them to offer American-Chinese dishes rather than traditional Chinese fare.

We are so very glad they did.

PEPPER HOUSE: 10176 Baltimore National Pike, Ste. 105, Ellicott City, 410-418-8866. HOURS: Tues.-Sun. 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m. PRICES: Noodles: $13.99-15.99; fried rice, hot pots and main dishes: $13.99-19.99.