Sydney, 21 April 2017
Today, my classmate invited me to have lunch in Chinatown. He's gonna take me to a Sichuan restaurant because he knows I like spicy food very much. He said, Sichuan is famous of its spicy culinary. I was so excited and curious to taste them all.
We met at Central Park Mall at 11.15 am and walked together to Chinatown. He said we need to come early since we might not get the seat if we come there a little bit late (so it is supposed to be a quite famous restaurant). It just took 10 minutes for us to get there. The name of the restaurant is Spicy Joint, so it should represent the spiciness of the food they serve. The restaurant was not very obvious from outside since it shares space in Harbour Plaza. But unlike the other food stalls, it occupies a whole second floor. It is so spacious and quite fancy.
I entrust my friend to pick the menu, since all of the foods look so tasty and spicy with overwhelmed chili slices on them. We ordered a basket of white rice, a bowl of beef in a chili broth, a bowl of various skewers (beef, chicken giblet, cow's tripe, shrimp, mushroom, tofu, and sliced potato), and a plate of cabbage cooked with sweet potato noodles. To me, each dish has unique taste to another, and I have never had such taste before in my life.
The beef is so salty but not that spicy despite it is dipped inside the chili broth. I was about to pour some of the broth over my rice because I wasn't satisfied with the spiciness but my friend said Chinese don't usually eat the broth. It turned to be oil and chili, not broth so I shouldn't eat it too much. I love the skewers better, since I can taste the spice inside the meat. The skewers are also dipped in broth but this time the broth is lighter and not spicy at all. So I guess the skewers have been marinated with spicy sauce previously. And the last, the cabbage turns out to be a little bit sour as my friend said they put some vinegar on it.
I was expecting a very spicy food, but it turned out those dishes are not that spicy. I aksed him whether these foods really represent the authentic Sichuan food and he said yes. He said it is very easy to find Chinese food ingredients in Sydney and the quality of those imported products are even better than the products sold locally in China. Overall I thanked him for introducing me a new experience of culinary. We only spent $61 for all those foods, which in my opinion is surprisingly cheap. I planned to invite him to Indonesian restaurant to taste nasi padang with its various chili sauces.
