Dainty Sichuan

Where 176 Toorak Road, South Yarra, 90781686
Prices Cold dishes, $8.80-$16.80; hot dishes, $16.80-$41.80. Hotpots: soup, $10-$20; raw ingredients, $4-$9; dipping sauces, $2.
Cards Cash only (ATM in the foyer); Eftpos
Licensed
Open Mon, Wed-Thurs, 11.30am-2.30pm, 4.30-9.30pm; Fri, 11.30am-2.30pm, 4.30-10pm; Sat 12-2.30pm, 4.30-10pm; Sun, 12-2.30pm, 4.30-9.30pm

CHINESE New Year kicks off this Sunday (a double-bunger with Valentine's Day) and to mark the Year of the Tiger, Dainty Sichuan is introducing some new dishes, including pippies with Sichuan chilli-salt. Yum.

But I'm leaping ahead; let's do a quick recap.

Dainty Sichuan started small in 2003, with only eight tables in its Collingwood digs. Three years later, it moved to its city haunt in Corrs Lane, where it built a cult following of chilli fanatics and lovers of Sichuan cuisine.

So admiring was its public that 120 seats just didn't cut it; there were queues out the door and the cramped space meant you were practically sitting in fellow diners' laps.

Owner Ye Shao even says: "Sometimes, people complained to me that if they had dinner in Corrs Lane, they'd have ears ringing for two days."

Dainty's latest, snazzier, quieter (but still boisterous) incarnation is in South Yarra. It has thick tables, heavy wooden chairs and rural scenes carved into smart wooden screens. It's roomy, with 100 seats, and in March, they'll open the first level, which means 250 people can pile in for Dainty's searingly hot food.

A dedicated hotpot menu is a new addition, the brothy base cooked by Shao's wife Tina, who studied traditional hotpot cooking in the city of Chongqing.

Choose "spicy soup" (a chilli-lovers' extravaganza) or the milder "stock soup". Both come steaming in a big metal bowl, kept warm by a hotplate in the table's centre.

Next, pick your raw ingredients from a 60-strong list that includes fish, beef tripe, fried dough, meatballs, pig stomach, three types of imported wild Chinese bamboo, lotus root, mushrooms (including oyster and shiitake) and long strands of pork kidney. And away you go — cook, dip and eat. It's lots of fun.

Of particular interest on the main menu is the black fungus with wild chilli. Springy cloud ear fungus is pickled in vinegar and tossed with red, green and yellow chilli and flu-fighting slivers of raw garlic. Served cold, it's a sprightly little number, with clean flavours and a great texture.

Also cold is the spicy beef-heart and tongue slices (chilli rating: two). Thinly sliced, fine-grained meats (mostly tender, although some pieces of heart were a bit chewy) are laced with chilli oil, coriander, whole peanuts and Sichuan pepper (dried berries from the prickly ash tree). At the bottom of the saucer, the meat is deliciously sodden with the spicy juices.

Save the spicy fish pot (chilli rating: three) for last. The enormous cauldron is a sea of chilli oil packed with reconstituted dried fish, bean shoots and handfuls of dried chilli husks on top. This is the brutal end of Sichuan cuisine, with a caveman approach to spicing. It grabs you by the hair and clumps you on the head with a chilli kapow and the numbing buzz of whole Sichuan peppercorns. It's not complex but this is what the crowds come for.

The service is fast — so much so, the helpful waiters get edgy if you dilly-dally with your order. They'll leave you alone once you've got your food, although they might bring you a wad of serviettes if you get the chilli sweats.

So, has Dainty Sichuan South Yarra still got it? You bet. Happy Year of the Tiger, and — you never know — maybe, just maybe, this will be the year Richmond takes the flag.