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SiChuan Dining Room

John Lethlean and Reviewer

<em>SiChuan Dining Room.</em>
SiChuan Dining Room.Supplied

Chinese

The family beside us aren't happy. Mum, dad, two kids in their early teens; they've been in and are now on their way out again within half an hour. As the man pays the bill, I overhear him mutter something about chilli before getting up and going home. Or perhaps to another restaurant; there's a pretty decent Cantonese around the corner.

Hey, pal, those big red things hanging decoratively outside SiChuan Dining Room on Glenferrie Road, part of the shrine-like ornate facade, yes, the long pointy things: they're not firecrackers. It goes to the heart of what fascinates me about SiChuan Dining Room; the place is just so damned uncompromising. In white bread, private school, caffe latte Hawthorn. I love it.

My first visit was a magnificently comical experience. It was early days, and I got the impression very few in the restaurant had ever actually worked in one before. So much activity, so little achievement.

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Where do I start? The picture menu with most of the dishes listed as "not yet available"; the 30-minute challenge to get a bottle of wine open; the negotiation for a better wine glass; the news that, despite signage to the contrary, they actually had no BYO licence; same story with credit cards; the schlep down to the cash machine to pay the bill. Golly, it was a funny experience.

But the food was really quite special if gastronomic discovery is one of your things and, along with a gaudy, blinged-up decor of hard surfaces and Chinoiserie, the place had an extraordinary air of authenticity. And, oh, the chilli and garlic.

None of your barbecue pork or salt and pepper calamari here.

My second assault, about three months later, proved a revelation.

New menus (without the "unavailable" stickers and with desserts); new staff who knew what they were doing and were happy to serve us; a BYO licence with decent wine glasses; credit-card facility; and that same completely uncompromising food.

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One dish sticks in my mind, a simple cucumber salad "with garlic paste" and a dash of sesame oil. The quantity of minced raw garlic was simply prodigious, half a small fist's worth: hot, pungent and with an after-taste that simply wouldn't go away.

But the place was great. They had addressed all the observations any experienced Melbourne diner might have made of the place, which had clearly involved some not inconsiderable set-up money. And, fortunately, it was still unlike any Chinese restaurant I know in Melbourne.

It's a long menu, of course. But it has pictures, along with some rather unusual translations ("saliva beef" anyone?). I mean, would you order a dish called "saliva beef" without seeing a picture of it? (We were told by a waiter it was so-named because it makes you salivate). But it is one of those menus that will have the food anthropologist of your family twitching with delight. Fried bean jelly; corn kernels fried with egg yolk; sea cucumber with sweet sauce and pork mince; rice eel and vermicelli clay pot; stir-fried beef tendon; boiled baby cabbage with chestnut; pigs' intestines with chilli.

Yes, seemingly everything comes with chilli - green, red, fresh, cooked or pickled - garlic, often black vinegar or sesame oil and some kind of soy bean variation. Shy, it ain't.

Fabulous soft "noodles" made from mung-bean jelly in a spicy soy sauce with spring onions and crushed peanuts ($7.80). Fronds of cooked fungus with pickled chilli (pieces and whole babies) and raw peanuts ($8.80). Wheat-flour pastry pork dumplings in a spicy/salty sauce with a crunchy paste of dried chilli and black sesame ($3.80).

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Fantastic, emphatic flavours.

A celery salad ($8) takes us by surprise: tossed in sesame oil, it has no chilli (other than a few pieces of carefully sliced red capsicum) and is warm from a wok. A dish called "tenpan squid" (which may well relate to a Japanese "teppan" or iron cooking plate) consists of a red-coloured squid that has been dried or semi-dried before cooking, its texture is firm, but very appealing. The tentacles are brilliant. It's drizzled with a sweet/salty sauce/paste of dried chilli and fermented bean (I think) and served with broccoli florets ($18.80).

A dish of sliced lamb stir-fried with cumin, fresh coriander, goodness knows what else and the most extraordinary quantity of cooked-through green and red chilli slices leaves me in awe of the lack of compromise here ($18.80). The chilli is not the hottest by any stretch, and the cooking has denatured its power somewhat, but the sheer quantity of the stuff is quite unbelievable.

I search for a something that two teenagers can grapple with.

"Boiled duck with cooked soy sauce" ($13.80 for half) is unremarkable, but suitably tame. Fried corn kernels ($13.80) in sandy-textured, salted duck-egg yolk - a concept often seen with crustacea - is rich and very, very yellow with an xtraordinary "popping" texture to each hot kernel melded with that mellow yolk "sand".

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The kids loathed it. I brought the leftovers home.

Naturally, they do mapo tofu, the Sichuan standard; I'm pretty sure it's what the family next door got in trouble with. The "braised pork cooked with five species (sic)" is a wonderful bargain of glistening pork shank in a slightly tart, fragrant red sauce that is low on the chilli factor. I could go on; I'm on a mission to try everything at this curiosity.

Strangely, given the volume of the savoury foods, Sichuan Dining Room's newly introduced desserts are quiet by comparison. Chengdu sweet soup balls are made from glutinous rice flour filled with a grainy, black sesame paste and arrive (four, $3.80) in warm water with a few dried red berries. I like them.

It's hard to get as enthusiastic about a glutinous rice cake ($3.80) dusted with toasted rice powder or a pinkish grass jelly with sago and milk ($2.80). They are SO about texture, not flavour.

But if curiosity factor is something you value in your domestic culinary tourism, you'll forgive the bland desserts. Many diners will react with the same disdain as our chilli-chastened neighbouring family, but Melburnians who value experiential dining will want to try it, if only once.

Score: 19: Unacceptable. 10-11: Just OK, some shortcomings. 12: Fair. 13: Getting there. 14: Recommended. 15: Good. 16: Really good. 17: Truly excellent. 18: Outstanding. 19-20: Approaching perfection, Victoria's best.

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