Last summer DNAinfo ran a short item about Sze Chuan Cuisine, the latest of many newer Chinatown restaurants specializing in the food of China’s southwestern Sichuan province, known primarily for the dual sensations of ma and la—respectively, the electric charge of the seeds and pods of the prickly ash tree and the blaze of chiles. Given the Sichuanese proliferation—thanks to an increasingly diverse influx of Chinese expats over the last half-dozen or so years—at first glance the news didn’t seem that earth-shattering. You could even say it was discouraging: the article paraphrased owner Andy Luo as saying that at his new place, the “region’s traditionally fiery dishes are tamped down to please all palates, traditionalists and newcomers alike.”
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In 2007 the late, great Double Li set a new standard for Chinatown, besting the beloved but increasingly compromised Lao Sze Chuan with the aggressively seasoned cuisine of owner Ben Li’s hometown of Chongqing. I came to measure every new Sichuanese restaurant against it, but I realize now that such comparisons are about as useful as stacking a Sicilian restaurant against a Roman one: Sze Chuan Cuisine specializes not in the cooking of Chongqing but in that of Chengdu, Sichuan’s largest city and its gastronomic capital. Genteel and conservative, according to the food writer Fuchsia Dunlop, Chengdu maintains a culinary rivalry with sweltering, humid Chongqing, where the food is more brash, spicy, and innovative.
I don’t have a dog in this fight. But I do appreciate the approach Sze Chuan Cuisine takes. Eating Sichuanese can sometimes feel like a full-contact sport, the heat and thrum of ma la-saturated dishes spiking the heart rate, draining the sweat glands, and simultaneously dulling the senses, so each course eventually blends into the next, offering little opportunity to taste anything but a dish’s most dominant forces. At Sze Chuan Cuisine the spice isn’t “tamped down” so much as balanced. There’s plenty of heat, but it’s restrained enough that other forms of deliciousness are able to rise from the flames.
Nothing on the menu is more surprising than a dish on the very last page called “air dried beef.” Unlovely in appearance, this pile of jerkylike shreds is nonetheless full of concentrated beefy, smoky—almost cheesy—flavor, making it particularly appropriate for nibbling along with one of the high-octane rice liquors lurking at the bottom of the page.
2414 S. Wentworth 312-791-1882chicagochuancai.com
