Light my fire

Our little group of foodies is soon to lose one of its members, to the great distress of the remaining ones... Lady Agar is leaving us soon to live her own version of the American dream, and a few "last chance" meals have been organised to wish her well. After Cepage last weekend, we gathered today for dinner at Yu Chuan Club (Shop B, 1/F, Hundred City Centre, 7-17 Amoy Street, Wan Chai) for a bit of spicy food. Yu Chuan is one of the famous private kitchens in HK and whips up excellent Sichuan dishes for a very reasonable price (about HKD 200 per person, which is incredibly cheap given the variety, quality and quantity of the food here). Overall, this was a pretty awesome meal. I enjoyed some dishes more than others, but this was down to a pure matter of taste rather than something being wrong with the said dishes. I would highly recommend this place to anyone who likes "manageably spicy" Sichuan food - none of the dishes was painfully spicy, even if on average well seasoned and for some of them quite hot. The more diners, the more dishes your party will be served, so round up the chilli junkies and book a large table.

Sliced pork

Very tender, with nice chunks of fat, and plenty of different chopped veggies added for texture. Very good.



Mouth-watering chicken, aka "saliva chicken"

This version was better than the equivalent at Da Ping Huo - fewer bones in the chicken, no floppy greasy skin, and a more fragrant sauce. Pretty good even if it's still not my favourite dish...

 




Noodles with chillies, Sichuan peppercorns, scallions, sesame oil etc... very nice

 

Chilli-marinated century eggs

Pretty good eggs with a good dose of ammonia and a chilli kick, with chopped scallions to add some crunch. Very nice.

Chilli-marinated century egg and noodles - close-up

Chilli-tossed cukes

A classic, very nicely done. Sesame oil and chillies made this dish very tasty.



Steamed pork with mystery starchy root veggie and chilli "crumble"

A very very good dish. Pork, carbs, fat and chillies - 4 essential food groups in one dish, what's there not to love?




Stir-fried prawns with egg yolk

A nice twist on a traditional recipe. In other restaurants the prawns would be de-shelled and deep-fried, then coated in egg yolk sauce. Here they were shells-on, and fried until crispy outside and still tender inside in a light egg-yolk based coating. Very good. Note the care taken with removing the legs, antennas etc... so that diners can munch on the shells without having to take anything off.



The mystery chilli "soup"...

... revealed some delicious garoupa fillets and sweet potato noodles with bean sprouts. Delicious and not as spicy as the coulour would let you think (you could actually drink the broth, which was yummy and packed with flavours).

Chilli frogs

Actually these were apparently toads and not frogs (it seems where the French use frogs, the Chinese prefer toads...). The meat definitely was tasty (unusually so) but I did not really enjoy this dish as the legs had been chopped up and there was tiny pieces of bones everywhere. I would have preferred the legs to be left whole for us to munch on... the slightly thick sauce was medium spicy and really tasty.

Mystery soup #2 - with mystery meats!! I passed on this dish, not being a huge fan of offal...

Fish

Probably steamed then flash-fried, and served with a thick sweet-sour sauce. Not really spicy but still pretty good.

Stir-fried chilli crabs

First coated in chilli batter, fried, then stir-fried with more chillies and Sichuan peppercorns... This is the kind of crab you eat with the shell, and quite frankly even if I am not a big fan (soft-shell crabs are one of my biggest pet hates), I have to admit that this was delicious and I quite enjoyed the crunchy legs and other bits - and I even had seconds (never say never...). This was supposed to be the spiciest dish of the evening, and even though it was clearly a notch or two above the others, I did not think it was that spicy... or is it that most of my tastebuds died after Da Ping Huo three weeks ago??

Crispy fried tripe with chilli

This was particularly delish - crispy rings of fried tripe, slightly chewy, with wonderful flavours and just kissed by the chillies. Yum!

Ma Po Tofu

This was surprisingly mild. The sauce was more meaty than spicy, and the fermented beans were quite nice. I love this dish and this was a pretty interesting version - I obviously had to have several servings and ended up taking most of the leftover tofu away in my doggie bag. It made for a fabulous office lunch the following day... all the more than said lunch box was lovingly quenelled by the Quenelle Fairy :o)

A big hug to the Quenelle Fairy for organising yet another fabulous dinner.