MìLà (formerly XCJ) Restaurant-Style Chili Oil

This chili oil tastes like it’s from a restaurant — because it is.

XCJ (Xiao Chi Jie, now rebranded as MìLà) built their reputation on restaurant-quality soup dumplings shipped to your door — we reviewed their dumplings and noodles separately and loved them. Their chili oil deserves its own entry.

The taste test

This is a true aromatic chili oil — made in Monterey Park, the beating heart of Chinese food in America. There’s a lot of oil in the jar, and that’s the point: the oil itself carries the flavor, the way it does at a great Chinese restaurant. You don’t discard it; you chase it.

We used our jar down to the bottom (you can see it in the video), which is the most honest review metric we have. It tastes exactly like the chili oil that comes to the table with your xiao long bao — because that’s literally its job.

Verdict

A+ tier. If your reference point for chili oil is “that stuff at the dumpling restaurant,” this is the closest bottled version we’ve found. Perfect on their soup dumplings, ideal on any dumpling, noodle, or rice situation.

Where to buy: eatmila.com — bundled with their dumplings is the move.