Is this Britain’s fieriest menu?

IT ALL starts so quietly, sitting upstairs in Shu Xiangge, a Gerrard Street restaurant, sipping cold Chinese beer and strolling through a vast menu that is as much anatomical chart as it is à la carte. There’s pig’s blood and beef aorta, ducks’ tongues, pork, kidney and brain. Plus three varieties of tripe. Alongside a rather less visceral selection of prawns, squid tentacles, lotus root and the rest.

You tick the raw ingredients you desire, then choose your broth. And this being a Sichuan hotpot place, the choice is somewhat limited. ‘Half and half?’ suggests Bill. Meaning one side is filled with a gentle, pellucid broth, soft, subtle and well behaved, the sort that always stands when a lady enters the room. The other is rather less polite, a searing, seething morass of oil, beef fat, Sichuan pepper and doubanjiang (a fierce chilli-bean paste made from fermented peppers and soy beans). This heady, bruising mélange simmers with barely controlled rage, a delectably Satanic brew that bombards the senses with vicious aplomb.

And it’s that scarlet-hued brute I’m after today. ‘We’ll have the red one please,’ I say with brash certainty. ‘Extra hot.’ The waiter is concerned. ‘Are you sure?’ he smiles. ‘It’s pretty fierce.’ I nod smugly. Before handing him the menu, with pretty much every box ticked. ‘It’s the Billy Big Balls order,’ I explain, once the waiter has gone. ‘Used around the world to show we’re serious about lunch. And miles removed from the gormless chilli-averse Western roundeyes who quake at the thought of anything more wobbly than a welldone chicken breast.’

Bill shrugs. He’s heard all this before. Especially my obsession with Sichuan food.

I’d fallen in love with Sichuan, and Chengdu, its lovely, languid capital, many years ago, First, upon reading Fuchsia Dunlop’s red oil-stained masterpiece, Sichuan Food. Then eating at Barshu for the first time, where that famous ma la combination of chillies and Sichuan pepper made my tongue pulse, my pulse quicken and my lips tingle with delight. Other classics too, from the mellow, sweet sour of ‘fish fragrance’ (yu xiang) dishes, to the rich savouriness of home style (jia chang) cooking. Yi cai yi ge, bai cai bai wei: ‘Each dish has its own style, and a hundred dishes have a hundred different flavours,’ Dunlop says.

Then I fell in love all over again visiting Chengdu. ‘Mountains are high, and the emperor a long way away,’ goes a famous saying. Meaning the inhabitants didn’t have to work too hard, instead devoting themselves to eating, drinking and mahjong. Not much has changed. It may not be a pretty city, but here, pleasure always comes first. Hotpots, skewers, braised rabbit heads, dan dan noodles, pig brain ma po tofu, searing water boiled beef and a thousand other delights.

But it’s the hotpot where the social meets the serious eating, both shared ritual and a fine way to banish the regional damp. This is not subtle food, though, at least in terms of flavour. After a few mouthfuls, everything tastes the same. Hence the importance of all those different textures – the crunch of cartilage and lotus root, the sensual softness of kidney and bean curd, the joyous wobble of barely set blood.

We start with thick slices of chilli beef, big on the chew, our lips starting to tingle, our mouths beginning to roar. Then tendon balls that offer a moment of rubbery resistance before succumbing, squeakily, between the teeth. Feathery beef tripe, cut small, is like bovine chewing gum, with the faintest whiff of the sewer. By now, conversation has been reduced to the occasional grunt, our lips plumped like porn stars, the sweat cascading from our brows. On we go, with fresh prawns and quail’s eggs, dunked for moments, then hauled out and dragged through sesame paste, or black vinegar. Pork ribs, with more bone than meat, are stripped and spat out. Piles of red oil-stained napkins pile up before us, as we dig out hitherto forgotten ingredients, abandoned to their fiery fate mere minutes before.

The heat is intense, but the pain is confined to the mouth alone. The throat escapes punishment, while the senses become super-sensitive, the body ecstatic with invading endorphins. A greedy smile is slashed across our faces, while the broth continues to seethe and simmer. By now, our tongues are fat as autumnal pigs, and the table resembles the final scenes of some 1970s Italian cannibal exploitation flick. Scarlet smears and assorted viscera, a gory cacophony of culinary carnage.

But this is more than mere edible machoism, rather something that thrills and pummels every sense. It’s 23 positions in a one-night stand, exquisite pain, munchies with the Marquis de Sade. Despite the filth and the fury, there’s something utterly life-affirming about Sichuan hotpot. And here at Shu Xiangge, close your eyes and you could be in Chengdu. So gird your loins, step forth unto battle, and give it your all. Hotpot heaven awaits.