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| - My daughter tells me, next time I'm in her area for lunch I should call her and she'll meet us. My wife is Chinese and we spent time in Sichuan and both love Sichuan and Hunan cooking.
So we meet at Szechuan Garden. My wife is certain to get her favorite Hunan frog legs which of course my daughter won't touch. But my wife drags my daughter over to the cold 'deli' counter and when they return, my daughter has a sickened look on her face and basically is telling me that she can't believe the things they eat. Anyway, the deal is like 3 selections from the cold deli for $6. The cold chicken is very tasty, the tofu strips were a concession for my daughter and the pigs ear skin in Sichuan pepper oil were one of the things that my daughter was struggling with - but rather tasty. Those with less of a sense of adventure should definitely get the beef tendon in the pepper oil since it is one of the things that truly reminds me of being in Chengdu.
My daughter gets a rather bland, Cantonese lunch and of course is unimpressed. Wife suggests that this probably isn't the place to bring my daughter who pretty much has issues with eating anything that reminds her that it once walked/flew/swam on earth.
But of course that leads me to the second phase of this review... the next time I go there.
I'm to meet my wife there and I am running late. She orders without me. Frog legs and pigs ears were not on today's table... Now I pride myself on being able to eat pretty much anything and I certainly recognize that the only thing Chinese won't eat is the oink itself but today is a struggle.
Wife has already ordered and already gracing the table is another Hunan inspiration but instead of frog legs, it's pork intestines. I pause a moment and say, what the heck and I'm almost embarrassed to admit that it was outstanding. Next up was the cold deli mix which contained my favorite oil/pepper mix but instead of beef tendon (my #1 choice) or pigs ear (eh), my wife suggests that this is cow lung. That Sichuan peppery oil has a chocolate quality to it... enough of it could probably make shit taste good. I'm really struggling though with the psychology of eating pigs intestines and cow lungs. Thankfully, we had the lamb ribs dry rubbed with cumin which although was rather sparse in the available meat category, the flavor was rather exceptional.
So this is the bottom line here. If you want to eat Szechuan (and the real Chinese pinyin spelling is Sichuan), you have to:
- do as good as you can to suspend your beliefs on what is edible and be willing to try something out of ordinary to find the real live food tastes available here.
- don't order Cantonese items... go to a Cantonese restaurant for Cantonese food. Cantonese is sweet, plain, bland. Egg Foo Young, Fried Rice, Orange Chicken, Sweet and Sour anything... go somewhere else. This is the Szechuan Garden.
- definitely do a plate from the cold deli counter and make sure you get something with the Sichuan peppery oil whether it's beef tendon or even just the cold chicken with the oil... it's a true slice of Sichuan
- Water boiled (fish / beef / chicken) etc. is incredible and most highly recommended.
- Hunan cuisine is quire rare in the valley and while I won't say that Szechuan Garden is great Hunan cuisine, it's certainly quite good, definitely different.
I'm hoping that there's laws on the books that prevent restaurants from selling dog because my wife would definitely order it. As it is, she is under instructions never to let me eat dog when I am with her in China and as insurance, a secondary promise to not tell me that I am eating dog.
As for the pork intestine... I admit it was extremely good and while I would have a difficult time ordering it myself, if it's put in front of me, I'm sure I would eat it again.
Restaurant... don't know about Szechuan Palace now that they changed ownership but this is one of the real gems in the valley
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