Closing in at #20 on the Canberra Times top 20 for 2013 came Red Chilli Sichuan. I haven't had a lot of Sichuan food in the past, the closest probably being Mao's in Fitzroy, which has delicious food. The top 20 list also featured Malamay which was skipped due to a higher price than preferred on this evening (and I recently found out that Malamay isn't particularly Sichuanese at all...).
There's a lot of red about the restaurant - the red sign, the red lanterns, the red seat cushions, and of course the red chilli.
- Mapo Tofu - tofu, pork mince, hot Sichuan sauce. Delicious fragrant and excellent;
- Lamb Ribs with Cumin - rich cumin flavours encrusting tender meat;
- Salt and Pepper Fried Fish - quite salty fish which was nice, but surprisingly the addition of fried corn kernels was a wonder.
Multiple topups of rice are necessary for completeness and to handle some of the numbing heat. I'll certainly be going back. There's a lot of good looking dishes on the menu here. They have live lobster, abalone and fish in tanks as a start. But when it comes to Chinese chilli cooking, I think I'm going to be a lamb rib/cumin and mapo tofu kinda-person for a while. Thanks to Beijing for starting that off for me.
09-2015
On a return trip (honestly there have been a couple in between) I ended up with the reliable mapo tofu and cumin lamb ribs again. I also added some new things to the taste explosion:
- King prawns with salted egg yolk and corn - an incredibly delicious umami-packed dish of textured prawns, crispy coating and corn and salted yolk;
- Fried soft shell crab - a large dish of juicy crab, chillis and salty fried crisp chunks.
This restaurant still remains near the top of flavoursome Chinese cuisine in Canberra. It isn't fine or fancy but it sure is satisfying.
