A Little Sichuan Food

SADLY THE TAURANGA BRANCH OF SICHUAN STYLE HAS NOW CLOSED. THERE ARE STILL OUTLETS IN HAMILTON (2) AND ROTORUA.

SICHUAN STYLE
Cuisine: Chinese, Sichuan
Address: 81 Devonport Rd, Tauranga
Phone: 07 571 3198
Website 
Drinks: Unlicensed
Reservations: Perhaps at nights

Chinese restaurants fall into two categories: those that serve a Westernised version of Hong Kong-style Chinese food and those who remain authentic to a particular Chinese regional cuisine. 

Actually, that's not exactly true. In broad strokes it is but, ultimately, nearly all Chinese restaurants are somewhere on the spectrum between those two poles. Outside the larger cities - where it is possible to be pretty specialised and authentic - most Chinese restaurants include a few, or more than a few, "crowd-pleasing" dishes, Western(ised) favourites you would be unlikely to see on original Chinese menus.  

Established in Hamilton in 2010, Sichuan Style now has two branches there plus another in Rotorua. The Tauranga offering, presumably because of the conservative nature of this city, features the "safest" of the various menus. If you look on-line at the full menu you will find that in Tauranga nearly all of the "weird" dishes - those involving tripe, other innards, and more unusual Chinese ingredients - are missing.

It a shame (for us unrepentant lovers of authentic Sichuan food) but you can't really argue with commercial reality. On the other hand, this isn't one of those restaurants where they ask you how hot you want the food. It comes as it comes. Though one time when I ordered a particularly hot dish (and it was blazing) they brought a complimentary cucumber dish to cool down our mouths which was a classy bit of service!

Three of us popped in for a quick dinner the other night and had:

 

Stir fry striped pork with Yu-Shiang sauce        $25.80

Sweet sour chicken in tomato sauce                   $25.80

Sour and spicy beef soup with rice vermicelli    $12.80

Shallow fry vege buns (6) with sesame seeds     $15.80 

Wonton soup with spicy sauce                            $12.80 (ordered to takeaway)

One of the regular features of a pretty authentic Chinese restaurant is that there are often a number of oddities on the menu in terms of the descriptions: many things simply do not translate well. 

For instance, instead of "striped" read "shredded" (that's how the pork and everything else - primarily wood-ear fungus and bamboo shoots - in that dish is cut). It is a dish with many names. Sichuan food expert Fucsia Dunlop calls it "Fish-Fragrant Pork Slivers" and it can also be spelled Yu-Xiang sauce. It is a unique and wonderful taste but difficult to describe. Even the menu has a subtitle - "Sweet, sour and spicy taste". Bottom line, Sichuan Style do an absolutely excellent version.

(BTW, just talking of Sichuan classics, they also do the only authentic and  - by some distance - best Kung-Pao Chicken in Tauranga.)

The Sweet and Sour Chicken I could take or leave. It is just fine but very much a Cantonese take. Sichuan sweet and sour dishes are a little different and I can imagine them possibly not finding favour with people expecting the usual bright "Westernised" sweet and sour style (which this was).

The dumplings were chive-dominated and very good, a really unusual and excellent texture with the sesame seeds adding a groovy crunch. The beef soup was rather wonderful. Those are chunks of bamboo shoot and peanuts on top and it was redolent with ginger, garlic and all sorts of spicy notes. The beef itself was succulent pieces of brisket.

There'll be more reviews of Sichuan Style coming up as we eat there fairly often and they do have a lot of interesting and worthwhile dishes. Just a couple of notes to finish up...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOTE: There are many price options here. There are some very reasonable noodle soups for around $12 - $16 which make a meal in themselves. The dumplings are damn good. The homemade noodles are very authentic and worth the extra $3 you pay for them (rather than the "regular" noodles). The main dishes are a little more expensive than some Chinese restaurants but they are sized to share and are quite large. To back this up, we actually ended up taking home half the beef and three of the dumplings as well as the wonton soup. There was just too much food...

ANOTHER NOTE: The manager, even to me, comes across as a little stern, but she has a real care for her customers. When we collected the takeaway Wonton Soup at the end, which we'd mentioned was for Jan's lunch the next day, she had packaged the wontons and soup separately so they wouldn't stick together overnight, a measure of service that we didn't expect and really appreciated!