Grand Sichuan International Review: Grand sichuan
The holiday atmosphere has dissipated and 2008 finally feels like it is really under way. The college football championship wrapped up yesterday and my beloved Buckeyes got crushed yet again. Oh SEC conference, how I loathe you… however, Eli Manning grew a pair and the Giants pulled off a win on Sunday. We spent the other half of Sunday chillaxing and watching LA Ink. TLC is really putting on some quality reality TV shows like LA Ink and Little People, Big World. I hope they never talk to Mark Burnett, otherwise we might end up new shows with concepts worse than what we already have. We might end up with stuff like “Can you tattoo better than a 5th grader” or maybe “Survivor: San Quentin”. The latter of which might actually be slightly hilarious. Just a teeny bit. The one thing I can do better than a fifth grader though, is eat. Mmmm.. no fifth grader can out eat me. Sunday ended with a dinner at Grand Sichuan in Chinatown.
Apparently there are a bunch of Grand Sichuan places in New York, but the one in Chinatown is not related to the other ones. Not like it really makes a difference to me one way or another; deliciousness knows no boundaries though, and I always love a good spicy meal. The Grand Sichuan in ctown does a booming business with the hot pot. I would say well over half of the people in the restaurant had hot pot. We went for the plated dishes instead.
We got four dishes, sauteed pea shoots, braised whole fish with chili sauce, braised beef in chili sauce, and mapo tofu. Menupages’ menu is slightly different from what they had at the restaurant, but basically we had a vegie dish along with C3 (fish), C11 (tofu), and C12 (beef). I like the letter + number ordering system. It is fun. You cannot use it at a place like Per Se though. You would probably want to let the words dance off your tongue if you are going to pay that much. But instead my life is full of lunch special number one and things like C3 and C12.
The pea shoots were delicious. They tasted like pea shoots are supposed to, and the garlic wonderfully complimented the fresh vegetable. I think pea shoots are the best things ever. Like srsly. The fish was good, and I had no idea what kind of fish they used, but I have no concerns for such things when the dish is good. Mapo tofu and the braised beef were probably my favorites, and I order those things almost every time. The beef comes in a shallow bowl that is full of chili oil. In fact, it is basically fillets of beef taking a szechuan chili bath. How can you beat that?
And to close off this post, let me go with something completely random. The other day I came upon this video of Malcolm Gladwell. In it, he talked about the search for a perfect spaghetti sauce, or at least the search by Prego for the perfect spaghetti sauce. And also Pepsi’s search for getting the right one, baby. I mean, the right formula for Diet Pepsi. Gladwell did a good job as a story teller, rehashing some food research done by someone else. And I do not know how many coffee drinkers are reading this, but apparently the majority of the population does not prefer dark, hearty roasts, but instead weak, milky coffee. Not sure if them’s fightin’ words, but we shall see.
Grand Sichuan International125 Canal St.New York, NY 10002212-625-9212
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