After living in my apartment building for over two years, I finally met a neighbor. And not just any neighbor; my dream neighbor. Super neighbor, if you will. M is currently a baker, freelance food writer and cookbook reviewer. In her past life, she’s was a travel writer and a chef on a private Alaskan yacht (she’s going to teach me how to make gravlax)! M and I started talking and discovered we had a lot in common. Okay, maybe not a lot… more like one major thing: food. We decided it was high time we got to know each other, so we picked a date for dinner. She suggested Sichuanese Cuisine, which was perfect because I had been meaning to try their hot-pot, which my friend John highly recommends (and by recommends, I mean keeps pestering me to try because he claims it’s the best hot-pot in the city).
Since Zach and I had never eaten at Sichuanese Cuisine before, we let M order for us. I was a little disappointed when M didn’t order hot-pot—and to make matters worse, my friend John walked in just after we did so I was nervous he’d lecture me for not heeding his recommendation. But as it turned out, this was the best Sichuan food I’ve ever tasted, and I will be hard-pressed to order the hot-pot in the future. Not because it didn’t look good, but because the other food was so fantastic. I was stuffed by the end of the night and was amazed that our bill came to $40 (including tip!) for four people.
Sichuanese Ravioli – Tiny, steamed pork and shrimp wontons in a mild pepper sauce. The filling was flavorful and the noodle was perfectly tender.
Pork with Bitter Melon – This is probably an acquired taste for many people, because bitter melon is truly bitter. I happen to love it and thought this dish was fantastic—very bitter slices of melon interspersed with shreds of highly seasoned and delicate, sweet pork.
Dry-Cooked Chicken with String Beans – Even though I flipped out over the pork with bitter melon, this dish was even better. I think this will be the dish I have to order every time—and I may order two of them. The chicken was little chunks of lightly breaded, fried chicken in a black bean sauce and the string beans were spicy and sautéed until perfect and wrinkly.
Chinese Greens – I guess this dish changes seasonally and this day it was tender pea shoots sautéed in a flavorful broth with lots of garlic. Normally I only eat greens because I’m supposed to, but in this case I ate them because they tasted good.
Steamed Rockfish – This was very good, but the least exciting of everything we tasted, probably because I make a similar dish at home a lot. The fish was steamed, then topped with a little soy and oil and tons of fresh ginger.
The pictures came out really weird because we were sitting near the window and everything was backlit with blue neon…
Those dishes all sound fantastic. I’ll have to give Sichuanese Cuisine a go…thanks for the ordering recommendations!
Yes, I highly recommend Sichuanese Cuisine.
Congrats on your Saucy article. The Tarte Tatin sounds fabulous!
You are so lucky! I wonder if you could tag along next time M has to review a restaurant…
McAuliflower,
I can only hope! That would be so much fun.
i took your advice and went to Sichuanese last night. we had the bitter melon – i miss this dish – my mum loves to make it. it was good. we also had the wontons in the la yu and also, the hunan beef. it was quite tasty. i like how they use good veggie portions in their meat dishes.
Stef,
That’s great! Hunan Beef sounds good… I may have to order that next time.
Sichuanese Cuisine is one of my favorites. The service is great…especially considering they don’t even speak english. My favorites include the steam dumplings, hot beef noodles, and the mandarin chicken!!! The beans are awesome too! I highly recommend this place.
Thanks for the tip Aaron! Mandarin chicken sounds great. Mmmmm.
i couldn’t find a contact link on this site, so i’m using this. i’m so glad to have found your blog. thank you for taking the time to share. based on your comments, we have tried sichuanese and black bottle, and will try oaxaca and zoe next. we were happy with the sichuanese (eastside branch) but the black bottle just knocked our sox off. it is the closest thing to the bin 941 in vancouver which may be our favorite restaurant anywhere. (by the way next time you go back to vancouver, you must go to the bin and the kitanoya guu with otokamae in gas town) back to the bb, we had flatbread, hangar steak, spicey prawns, and potatoes & cauliflower. everything was wonderful and the service was great.
thanks again for your site. i’ll write more feedback on your posts as we try them.
J, So glad you liked Black Bottle! I recently tried the flatbreads as well… they’re incredible. Bin 941 has actually been on my list of restaurants to try for quite some time now, although I’ve never made it in. Next trip up I will definitely check it out, along with Kitanoya Guu. Thanks for the tips!
hi meg,
we returned to the eastside sichuanese and tried the dried cooked chicken. it was very good but had more chili than i thought possible. next time we’ll ask them to ease off. it got very crowded (mostly chinese speakers) and the servers were harried and didn’t speak a whole lot of english so we didn’t want to tie them up with a lot of questions. the specials on the board and on the tables were only in chinese. the menu seems to be poorly translated and very brief (not descriptive). because we’ve loved the food so far and want to try more dishes, we’re hoping you can answer some of these questions: – are dried cooked beef/pork versions of the chicken dish? – what do the following terms mean?
Sa-Wok, Dong-Po, Bo, pork bung, HaRaPeNo Chili.
could the last be jalapeno? if you don’t know any of these, please don’t feel that you have to find out. i’ll ask them next time i go.
one more question. have you tried any of the entrees at brasa?
speaking of your vancouver list, did you do the richmond night market last summer? in case you missed it like us, here’s nancyland’s post:
http://nancyland.blogspot.com/2005/09/richmond-night-market.html
Hi J,
I’m wondering if the food is a little different at the ID location. Also, the waitstaff here is really friendly and helpful–and makes great recommendations. I haven’t tried the dried cook beef or pork, but I would assume they are similar to the chicken dish. I’m not sure about the Sa-Wok or Pork Bung, but if the Dong-Po is anything like this, I would recommend trying it out! And I think the last one you mentioned is Jalapeño Chili–kind of cute and funny spelling, but I can’t do hot food, so I haven’t tried that one.
Yes, Brasa is on my list of favorite Seattle restaurants. I especially like the suckling pig, fontina ravs and squid ink risotto (although I’m not sure if any of those are still on the menu). I also like going to the Brasa bar for happy hour—where everything on the bar menu is half off! My faves are the Steak Frites with Cabrales Butter and the Lamb Burger.
J,
I haven’t been to the Richmond night market, but it sounds great! Thanks for the link—I’ll have to try it out next year!