Sichuan cuisine Food this flavoursome is made for sharing. So why are the waitresses laughing?

SICHUAN HOUSE

AMONG the things I have forgotten recently are that the Sorn Inn is actually in the village of Sorn (thanks for all the emails), the Champanay Inn has long lost its Michelin star – thanks again for all the emails – and crucially that my mate Joe, once possibly Scotland’s most eligible state prosecutor, is no longer single.

I only remember the latter when he responds to my text suggesting dinner in 15 minutes not with his usual Ayrshire “Aye, where?” but with the news that he can’t as he’s going to a movie at the GFT.

The GFT? On a Monday night? It’s either love or a two-for-one I mutter as I settle uncomfortably into my seat at the Sichuan here. I say uncomfortably because after spending 20 minutes scanning the glossy magazine-quality menu, and it takes that long, it is obvious that all Sichuan dishes are served in the Chinese style – ie huge sharing sizes only.

If we fast forward a bit I can reveal this will be one of those nights where I sit alone at a table crammed with lovely tureens, beautiful bowls, mini-woks on burners and even more plates all heaped with food while the waitresses stifle giggles and the other customers, all from the Chinese community, try not to stare. For too long.

“Next time you bring a friend,” one of the waitresses will say to me as she lights the burner under a dish of hot and chilli frogs’ legs and sets it a-sizzling and a-popping. Yes, I thought that would get your attention. Frogs’ legs. They would get mine, too, were I not deep into a tureen of sweet, crisp stir-fried cabbage with pork slice.

Outside liquid ice rains on to dreich Sauchiehall Street, but on this plate, in here, are the burning flavours of Sichuan province. Heaps of chopped fat red chillis, garlic, tangy ginger-infused crisp pork, chilli oil and, of course, those stinging, mouth-numbing, crunchy, hot and addictive sichuan peppercorns which feature in just about every thing I order.

I have a bowl of oil spilled noodles on the table now – as colourful in their canted dish as a Cezanne still life – and xingang chicken with potato and noodles.

Those oil spilled noodles? To me a Chinese version of the Italian spaghetti, aglio, olio e peperoncino – hot, garlicky, slippery, fired with more chilli but in the Sichuan style flecked with lettuce.

The potatoes in the chicken dish are flavoured by green chilli and a blisteringly hot sauce while the thick noodles underneath, like all the noodles in here, are freshly made on the premises. A word on that chicken? Served in the authentic Chinese style, finely chopped on their fine bones. It makes for hands-on eating.

Don’t get me wrong. This is a sophisticated, elegant restaurant and although some of the tables are occupied by groups of Chinese students, there are also couples sharing what looks from the menu photos – yes, there are photos – like birthday noodles, house roasted seabass and sichuan crayfish.

The car crash of dishes on my table, and I do also have some clean, crisp chilli spring rolls, has attracted the attention of the chatty manager who tells me this is Scotland’s first Sichuan restaurant.

Of course there are many Chinese restaurants: Cantonese, Malaysian Chinese, even Hong Kong Chinese like Ka-ka-lok just down the road and, endless all-sauces-from-

PHOTOGRAPH: MARTIN SHIELDS Sichuan peppercorns lend fiery heat to almost all dishes at Sichuan House, though there’s a palpable degree of sophistication at work too