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| - A group of friends and I came here after a day of snowboarding craving some spicy food. This place is by far the most authentic Szechuan restaurant I've been to. I'm not joking, Fugu would seriously destroy other Chinese restaurants if they decide to move to Chicago Chinatown.
We ordered 2 cold appetizers and 5 entrees for 5 of us. I'm not sure if the waiting was truly long, or we just felt like it because we were in a room full of spicy aroma. But once they started serving the dishes, it was really fast, we had all our 7 plates in 10min. We started with two very traditional dishes, pepper shredded tripe and ox tongue and tripe, which I always use to test the authenticity of a Szechuan restaurant. Fugu definitely passed my test. Everyone suddenly stopped talking and quietly enjoyed the texture and the flavor.
The house-special steamed lamb pot was really good and I also loved the crispy chili (haven't had it for years and I found it here!). I was a little bit disappointed with the poached beef, fish with pickled chili and spicy aromatic pig blood tofu. They were good, but they just didn't meet the high expectations I built up after the cold appetizers and first two dishes. I can't explain what was it, but there was something missing in their flavor, maybe it needs to a little bit more complexity of spicy and sour?
The waiter was very friendly and he asked for our suggestions and even apologized for "letting us down" with some of the dishes. I gave Fugu a solid 4 stars and I will definitely revisit this place. If you love authentic Chinese food, Fugu is the place to go!
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