Call it Chinese pride, but to me nothing conveys the joy of a family reunion like sitting in a big circle round a banquet table, passing rice and feasting family style. So when my parents and godparents visited me in the city for the first time this past week, I gathered a bunch of close friends to share our family meal. My choice of restaurant? Wu Liang Ye, a Szechuan restaurant with an authentic and fiery menu that can satisfy a big bunch of spice lovers who are also rather particular about what they eat. Also, Wu Liang Ye happens to be a very popular place where my office mates order from, so I thought I’d do them and myself a service by recording the details of dinner for future reference.
Between the 10 of us, we shared:
Cold Appetizers:
Poached tender beef with 5-spice (8): Chilled pieces of sliced beef, poached in soy and aromatic spices was the Szechuan variant of brisket. The meat was generally lean but speckled with bits of gelatin for crunch. Best with beer, and good without too.
Steamed fresh bacon with garlic-soy vinaigrette (6): Thin ribbons of poached pork belly doused with a thick, black sweetish sauce was lusciously smooth. A generous heap of finely minced raw garlic piled on the meat strips provided a resolute heat and the strongest “garlic breath” I’ve encountered in a while.
Julienne Jelly fish with scallion pesto (11): A little unfortunate that this dish was so bland, and the smallish portion size did not justify the price. A little deflated because Rosie and I had really loved the poached razor clams with the same scallion pesto in the specials section on previous trips.
Sliced mung-bean jelly in roasted chili vinaigrette (not on take out menu, ask for ma-la-liang-fen): Wow… the most numbing dish we ordered, where the cool, slick threads of jelly provided a foil for the intense spicyness and numbing power of Szechuan peppercorns.
Hot and sour soup (33) : A little compromised, as the soup was neither hot nor sour enough and while thick enough, was not quite warm too.
Entrees:
Camphur tea smoked duck (81): There are two duck dishes on the top of the Chef’s specialty section, roasted lacquer duck (aka peking duck) and smoked duck. Since Wu Liang Ye is not a Beijing restaurant, the former is really not a specialty and should be avoided. But the smoked duck is a Szechuan dish, and with a pleasing saltiness and very crunchy skin tastes uncannily like bacon. And bacon, my friends is always great.
Stir-fried Prawns with Yibin Spiced Chili Asparagus (88): What sets Sichuan food apart from the rest of the Chinese cuisine styles is its numbing spiciness, much of which can be attributed to a particular type of peppercorn. Our large and bouncy prawns were quickly dry-fried to retain its crunchiness. The absence of any gloppy sauce also meant that the sweetness of the prawns and asparagus could be fully appreciated, together with the ”hot hot hot” sensation of the chili mix.
Braised Whole Fish with Szechuan Chili Miso Sauce (82): A whole fish fried and then drizzled with a thick fiery red sauce. The sauce is made of chili and chinese fermented beans that are somewhat akin to miso paste, but not as smooth and a degree more pungent. The fish had nice delicate meat, while the chili sauce was great blended in with rice for a good saucy meal. It is in the genes. I love Chinese food. And in affirmation of my Southeast Asian roots, spicy is the way to go. Hence my affinity to the numbing spiciness that characterizes Szechuan food.
Sauteed Stringbeans with Spring Bamboo Shoots (78): The tastiest and least healthy way to eat your greens is to deep-fry it, as the stringbeans in this dish are treated. Wow do those vegetables soak up all! The dish is typically cooked with minced pork, but we opted for it to be 100% vegetarian, so in lieu of the pork, the cooks fried the beans and tender bamboo shoots with minced dried mustard greens that were olive-like in their savoriness that you would not even miss the pork.
Braised Pan Seared Tofu Shitake (101): A tofu dish to round up dinner and provide my mum with some protein. A pretty standard chinese dish with tofu and vegetables drenched in a light chili-based sauce that was good on rice.
Writing this now, I cannot believe we ate it all. But we did, and with full bellies and not a piece of stray duck left, Wu Liang Ye gets my family’s seal of approval.
Wu Liang Ye
36 W48th St (Bet 5th & 6th Aves)
Numbers next to names of dishes denote the numbers on the takeout-menu, also found on menupages.com
