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Food Food & Drink

Feeling hot, hot, hot

SICHUAN HOUSE (394 Spadina, at Nassau, 416-597-9333) Complete dinners for $20 per person (lunches $12), including all taxes, tip and a domestic beer. Average main $10/$6. Open Monday to Thursday 11 am to 10:30 pm, Friday to Sunday, holidays 11 am to 11 pm. Licensed. Access: two steps at door, washrooms on same floor. Rating: NNN


How hot is Sichuan House? Well, anything on the two-month-old Chinatown resto’s menu that’s marked with a chili is sure to cause nuclear meltdown. We’re talking flop-sweat and tears – and that’s after just a cold starter of spicy chicken salad (#106, $7.50)!

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Serious heat seekers should follow with Ma Po Tofu (#402, $9.50), an innocuous-sounding stir-fry of slippery bean curd, ground beef and scallions in incendiary chili bean paste, Sichuan pepper and about 40 whole dried red chilies. Impress your friends by knowing that Sichuan pepper is the seed pod of a citrus fruit with a unique anesthetic effect, not a peppercorn, and that the chilies are there for a wallop of flavour, not to be eaten.

Because they’re topped with only one-10th the amount in Ma Po Tofu, linguine-like Dan Dan Noodles (#903, $4.99) with wilted cabbage warrant only one chili on the menu – still enough to frighten the milquetoasts in your crowd. Steer them to another Sichuan classic, Double-Cooked Pork (#202, $8.50), thinly cut slices of boiled-then-fried belly in a relatively tame sauce of ginger and garlic.

Pork Spare Ribs

Virtually every Chinese restaurant in town does a watered-down version of Kung Po Chicken (#601, $8.50), but few are as authentic as Sichuan House’s, a colourful combo of quickly cooked thigh, crunchy peanuts and sweet bell peppers that’s as explosive as it sounds.

Vegetarians will find the pickings slim. Home-Style Fried Tofu (#403, $6.99) sees a meaty mess of deep-fried bean curd laced with dark soy sauce and a modicum of chilies, while what the card calls “tomato stir-fried with scrambled egg” (#416, $7.50) is exactly that and nothing more. Oh, that I’d known beforehand that “sauteed balsam pear” (#417, $7.99) is slimy bitter melon and not dessert.

Alongside three-course Peking roast duck dinners ($33.99 for two) and several all-in-one hot pots ($15.99 and up), Sichuan House also offers a short lineup of dim-sum-style snacks, most notably a “special” pancake (#801, $3.50) layered with minced lamb, feathery fried egg and hoisin, and meatball-sized pork and leek dumplings (#815, $4.99 for 12, though three is plenty) that give nearby Mother’s a run for her money.

While they sure are cute, heart-shaped pumpkin cakes (#816, $3.50) are greasy and best avoided unless you’re on a date. Stick to the hot stuff and you’re more than likely to get lucky.

stevend@nowtoronto.com

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