One of the things that I have wanted to do this year was to try and eat at as many new Sichuan restaurants I can before the inevitable happens and I land myself back stateside. Thanks to a little motivation by Fuchsia Dunlop's recent visit and article I had just the motivation that I needed to hit the food trail.
I was able to round up 8 of my most adventurous eating friends and hit our first restaurant. I chose Shun Xing Teahouse 顺星茶楼 as our first restaurant because I didn't want to scare anyone off on our first week. There als happened to be some extremely cold weather hitting Chengdu and wanted a place that we could all eat in comfort without worrying about freezing. I was pleasantly surprised when we arrived and a couple of the women said they had been to this restaurant before and it was extremely good.
Fuchsia had recommend the xiao chi 小吃 or snack menu, but I couldn't get buy in from everyone. We ended up ordering two of the snack set menus along with some cold and hot dishes. I took some photos of some of our dishes, but I was so excited to eat and didn't manage to write down the names of all the dishes! Oh well, next time...
Cucumbers with a soy-hoisin sauce
Tea smoked duck
This was my absolute favorite! It is this green, leafy vegetable Tong Hao Cai 桐耗菜 that looks similar to rocket/arugula. They served it in a lovely, sweet, vinegar dressing.
This was a beef cold dish with garlic shoots, cilantro and red chilies. It had a nice sweet dressing to cool it down.
A spinach dumpling from the snack menu
The restaurant was absolutely beautiful with a small photo museum in the back of the restaurant with old photos of Chengdu. In the evening they also have a Changing Mask performance, but reservations are a must as they are always fully booked. The other thing that I loved about the restaurant is they had men coming around to your table asking if they can clean your ear or give you a massage. I look forward to returning to Shun Xing Teahouse in the very near future with my family and visitor.
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