“Life gives you surprises, life gives you surprises” sang the Plateria Orchestra, covering the song written by Rubén Blades and Son del Solar. Finding a restaurant by chance and, surprise, being hypnotized by the flavors of its dishes is not easy, but the joys, like witches, “I don’t know if they exist, but there are some.”
And it was leaving the premises of the Sant Pau Hospital when, walking through Sant Antoni Maria Claret, our stomach warned us that hunger was about to show signs of life and we entered one of those restaurants that we disparagingly call “a Chinese ”.
Chinese cuisine is going through a time of certain confusion. It will be due to its excessive proliferation, its menus with everything for a hundred, or the Chinese bars with misleading pseudonyms, the reasons why Chinese food is faithful to the saying that says that together we killed it and it died alone. That would be true if places like Sichuan did not exist, a delight that looks like a neighborhood restaurant in which there is no maneki-neko at the entrance, the Chinese cat that invites you in with its tireless fist.
The manager of Sichuan is Amei and her friendliness is the mirror of a place with a menu without deception. Its dishes are the representation of the cuisine of the province of Sichuan and it is not surprising, because a gastronomy as rich as the rest of those that coexist in China, should only be surprising for its low quality. At Sichuan, the diner will enjoy and, as with Chinese eggplant casserole, will never want to see the bottom of the dishes. Good cooking turns you into a child incapable of understanding that things end.
I was curious about the menu, because it makes me sick, when I saw some tripe with vegetables advertised and I ordered them, and like a gourmet Julius Caesar, vedi, vini, vici. It seems easy, but good tripe is difficult to find and I verified that in China they also know how to prepare them with the sweetness of a good Madrid chef.
My companion ordered a cucumber salad which, due to the ingredient, may seem banal, but it was as surprising as a classic like chicken with almonds. There is a lot of wisdom behind some dishes that you can, they say, find in many establishments that call themselves Chinese, but that in the Sichuan restaurant are prepared with the delicacy that one dreams of when thinking about the Far Eastern country. Without massacres like Tiananmen, of course.
I will return to Sichuan whenever my body asks for it and for the next few occasions I have several dishes and a dessert planned: sour-hot stir-fried potatoes, chicken legs with pickled peppers, fried sweet potato noodles, meat pudding with sour vegetables, soup of knuckle, fried rice with corn and crab, steamed hake head with vegetables and some fried nuts. Oh, and the Peking duck, a classic so classic that it is difficult to find it in three delicious restaurants when the delight is Sichuan, a neighborhood restaurant located in Baix Guinardó.
