THE Red Chilli Group has come to town and if bursts of spicy, tongue-tingling Sichuan is your thing you’ll be mighty pleased.
I’ve been to the group’s restaurants in Sydney, which never disappoint. No doubt those in other cities are just as hot and regularly packed out. So when I heard that Red Chilli Sichuan Restaurant had opened in Civic, I grabbed two friends and off we went.
Sichuan cuisine is delightful. Although not all dishes feature chilli, many do and these are the best in my book. The menu says the number of Sichuan dishes has surpassed 5000 with some of the more famous including twice-cooked pork and spicy diced chicken with peanuts, also known as famous Kungpao chicken, which I’ve enjoyed in Sydney. It’s a super dish and, remember, you can order mild, medium or blow your socks off.
We started with wontons served in a hot chilli sauce (six for $7.50). They were fantastic and we could have eaten them all day. The boiled Chinese cabbage and prawn mince (12 for $12) were great, with two of us preferring the soy-based sauce over the vinegar-based one.
The extensive menu features traditional, authentic dishes such as tea-smoked duck with pancakes, a chef’s special, which we tried ($19.50). Sichuan cuisine uses smoking, salting, pickling and drying to preserve many foods. We found the duck too heavily smoked and overpowering for our liking. We also had it in our heads that the pancakes would be thin, not doughy, but that’s not to say the dish was not cooked as it was meant to be cooked. This is a preference issue, not a problem in the kitchen.
We also ordered a restaurant-recommended dish, the deep-fried black tiger prawns with “mysterious sauce” ($26.80), which we found on the sweet side. A favourite dish by far was the stir-fried green beans with pork mince ($16).
Red Chilli has fish tanks at the back with lobster, mud crab, parrot fish and barramundi (market price) on offer.
We’re adventurous diners, but the less-familiar dishes such as jellyfish head, stir-fried duck heads, pickled chicken feet and pork ears, and beef tongue and tripe will have to wait.
Red Chilli isn’t in new premises – I believe a restaurant was in the space previously. There are private dining rooms off the main dining area. We agreed the place could use a mighty good scrub, especially ceiling vents and glass areas. The service needs a pick-me-up. It was super slow to order and super slow to be served. And when we ordered a bottle of wine, we were served one that had been opened and was half full. Oops.
Red Chilli Sichuan Restaurant, open lunch and dinner, seven days. Novotel Building, 75-89 Alinga Street, Civic. Call 6248 6288.
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