When Stephen told me about a new Sichuan place in Brick
Lane, I was in no hurry to go. I don’t know – I guess I just felt that there
were a few places doing good Sichuan and did I really need to try another one... would it stand a chance of bettering places like Ba Shan or Silk Road?
Well, I’m not saying Sichuan Folk was necessarily better but it is
definitely worthy of a visit. The place itself is really nice – the exterior
doesn’t give you an accurate impression of the peaceful, tasteful décor inside.
Service was warm and just lovely. Our waiter asked us if we’d
been before and when we said we hadn’t (and that we liked it spicy) he went
through the menu and picked out the best dishes from each section for us. He
highlighted way more than we could actually eat so we narrowed it down to two
mains and a starter but there were plenty of choices that I thought sounded
really good and that I’d like to come back and try, not least the cumin lamb.
So, in the end, we had their signature pork dumplings, the twice cooked pork and 'beef in a spicy and lip-tingling sauce' with some steamed rice. Each dish had a varying element of
spiciness to it, but none of them were overwhelmingly so – they weren’t so
spicy that you couldn’t make out the unique flavours of each one. The beef had,
as you might expect, a deep, meaty flavour and hidden among the broth of
chillies were bean sprouts and bok choi as well as tender pieces of beef. It was, indeed, lip tingling.
The pork I think might have been my favourite. It was thinly sliced pork belly with onions and peppers and was served with four hirata-style buns for you to stuff with filling. Despite the oil this had an almost dry taste to it, the meat being practically crispy it was so thin.
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Please feel free to add your views, or maybe suggest somewhere I should put on my list!