A tale of two chickens...
Mar. 27th, 2011 08:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranLast weekend, we went out to Palace Garden in Menai. It billed itself as "Modern Chinese" although it soon emerged that this actually meant your typical suburban Australian Chinese restaurant. For what it was, it wasn't too bad, but not really worth going out of our way for (and also slightly pricier than other places).
One of the dishes we had was "Sichuan chicken" which turned out to be strips of chicken breast fillet in chilli sauce. The sauces were actually all well done there, but the chicken was quite bland and there was no texture. Presumably, their target market saw breast fillet as a plus because there were no bones to deal with, but from a Chinese point of view, the bones are what bring about all the flavour.
This week, by coincidence, we met up with some friends at the real deal - Red Chilli Sichuan in Chatswood. The first clue that this was going to be something special was when I phoned to make a booking and the girl answered in Mandarin. Next, not only was its website mostly in Chinese, but the menus also had copious tracts explaining each dish, again in Chinese. This was Modern Chinese in every sense, the sort of stylish restaurant that has started emerging across China in the last few years, taking on western standards of presentation and branding, yet pursuing a home-grown agenda. The Chinese name is actually "Shui Jing Fang Sichuan" and it appears to be run by the Shui Jing Fang liquor company, a fact that you might never guess by reading only the English signage. In Chinese, however, the "Shui Jing Fang" logo was plastered everywhere.
As often happens with these places, there was a feeling of being in overlaid, parallel worlds, with two different restaurants existing depending on which eyes you used to look. But it was also clear which of the two possible restaurants the owners saw as their main focus.
The food, of course, was outstanding, at least by Sydney standards. And sure enough one of the dishes we had was stewed chicken with chilli, although a world away from what we had at Palace Garden. The chicken here was a whole carcass, skin, bones and all, flattened under a mountain of fresh chillies, Sichuan peppers and other spices. Eating the chicken off the bone, skin, fat and muscle forming multitextured layers, there was just no comparison with the pale breast fillet of the week before.
But the most amazing thing was that the cost ended up being about the same. It's a bit of a drive for us, but it's quite clear which one we're going back to. And it's quite clear to me, which world I'd rather live in.
One of the dishes we had was "Sichuan chicken" which turned out to be strips of chicken breast fillet in chilli sauce. The sauces were actually all well done there, but the chicken was quite bland and there was no texture. Presumably, their target market saw breast fillet as a plus because there were no bones to deal with, but from a Chinese point of view, the bones are what bring about all the flavour.
This week, by coincidence, we met up with some friends at the real deal - Red Chilli Sichuan in Chatswood. The first clue that this was going to be something special was when I phoned to make a booking and the girl answered in Mandarin. Next, not only was its website mostly in Chinese, but the menus also had copious tracts explaining each dish, again in Chinese. This was Modern Chinese in every sense, the sort of stylish restaurant that has started emerging across China in the last few years, taking on western standards of presentation and branding, yet pursuing a home-grown agenda. The Chinese name is actually "Shui Jing Fang Sichuan" and it appears to be run by the Shui Jing Fang liquor company, a fact that you might never guess by reading only the English signage. In Chinese, however, the "Shui Jing Fang" logo was plastered everywhere.
As often happens with these places, there was a feeling of being in overlaid, parallel worlds, with two different restaurants existing depending on which eyes you used to look. But it was also clear which of the two possible restaurants the owners saw as their main focus.
The food, of course, was outstanding, at least by Sydney standards. And sure enough one of the dishes we had was stewed chicken with chilli, although a world away from what we had at Palace Garden. The chicken here was a whole carcass, skin, bones and all, flattened under a mountain of fresh chillies, Sichuan peppers and other spices. Eating the chicken off the bone, skin, fat and muscle forming multitextured layers, there was just no comparison with the pale breast fillet of the week before.
But the most amazing thing was that the cost ended up being about the same. It's a bit of a drive for us, but it's quite clear which one we're going back to. And it's quite clear to me, which world I'd rather live in.
