Secret Worlds, Part 372

[khiemtran]

So, on Sunday night, I discovered the location of Shu Xiang Fang.


On Friday, over lunch at a Chinese hot pot place, I was talking about Sichuan restaurants with some friends and I mentioned Shui Jing Fang, a well-known (to Chinese) restaurant that goes by the English name of "Red Chilli Sichuan". Actually, it's a bit more complicated than that. Shui Jing Fang actually means something like water-well-district but it's also the name of a well-known liquor company which also owns the restaurant.

So, anyway, one of my friends, mentioned that Shu Xiang Fang was also good and explained that while Shu was the Chinese abbreviation for Sichuan, Xiang was short for Hunan. This was new to me, so of course, I was very keen to work out where this Shu Xiang Fang was.

The first problem was that I didn't hear her properly and I thought she said "Su Xiang Fang". Googling for this didn't bring up any matches, but then I checked the wikipedia entry for Sichuan, and, sure enough, it said the abbreviation was Shu.

Now searching for the right string, I found only one match for Sydney, on a food blog written in Bahasa Indonesia. Which, unfortunately, didn't give the English name, but it did at least give the address. I put the address into google maps, searched around the immediate area and .. aha!

Right at the spot where Shu Xiang Fang was held to be was "Spicy Sichuan Restaurant" in Haymarket, which I've actually walked past a few times, and have been meaning to try.

So, in the English-only world, it's "Spicy Sichuan", but to the Chinese-speakers, its speciality is Sichuan and Hunan cooking. Which, funnily enough, is also the speciality of "Red Chilli Sichuan". I'm guessing Shu Xiang Fang is in fact a copy of Shui Jing Fang, but no doubt closer investigation is required....

Edited: deleted the part where I thought that the Xiang for Hunan was the same Xiang as in Hong Kong, because it isn't.

Comments

[carl-allery.livejournal.com]

Holmes would be proud of you, sir. ;) And certainly, having tracked it down, closer investigation is indeed in order. But how do you test a new eatery? Do you order something new that you haven't seen before but might not like, or something you like, to see if they can make it even better? :)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Usually a bit of both. But the nice thing about these modern Chinese restaurants is that there's lots of things I haven't seen before. Ideally, of course, there'll be lots of people there so we can order lots of different dishes. I'm thinking of going to the city on Sunday, so maybe I'll try a reconnaissance run then.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

the nice thing about these modern Chinese restaurants is that there's lots of things I haven't seen before

Are they on the menu? Because the english language menus of our local restaurants seem to still be mired in the same limited menu - and once you've been to the Chinese wholesaler's, you can construct the menu from that...

(Do report back, please!)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Well... when we went to Shui Jing Fang, they were on the menu, but the menu was mostly in Chinese. Fortunately we had a friend with us who could read the stories about each of the dishes.

Not sure what you mean by a "Chinese wholesaler" though. None of the dishes would match to anything you could buy as a single ingredient.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

There's a wholesaler in Britain called Wing Yip. They sell rice and garlic and spices and, well, *everything* in restaurant-sized packages. And they do canisters of black bean sauce and spicy Szechuan sauce and....
Most of the Chinese takeaways and a good number of sit-down restaurants are presenting the same dishes over and over, with the same meat/vegetable combinations. It's less 'Chinese' than 'British Takeaway Chinese'.

Which reminds me, I need to visit our local Chinese supermarket and pick up another litre bottle of soy sauce...

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

So the mythical Sui Jing Fang still remains to be discovered? At least you should have fun trying out its clone.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

No, we've already been there and it was great. It was the sort of restaurant that's popping up all over China now - offering modern Chinese food from a Chinese perspective, in nice surroundings.