The Sichuan style Chinese restaurant offers an attractive menu, in every sense. There are lots of really interesting sounding dishes, large attractive descriptive photos and – best of all – oodles of fabulous mistranslations.
Things get off to a great start right inside the front cover with “hand exhausted bamboo”. The unintended pun gets a visual boost with an accompanying photo depicting a purple, phallical bamboo shoot rearing out of a pool of chilli sauce, its assumedly hand exhausted brethren lying wan and peeled in neat stacks alongside.
I first ate at the Spicy Joint a couple of weeks ago with Lindsay and Freeman. We decided to go for peculiar rather than punny dishes, so ended up eating things like spicy chicken gizzards. Everyone I’ve told about this dish has replied “Eeew!” For the record, chicken gizzards are not even remotely hideous. They have a firmish texture and taste like chicken. Funny, that.
The nearest we got to word playing with our food was “doll cabbage” - vertically sliced Chinese cabbage hearts in a tasty sauce we suspected may have had more than a passing acquaintance with Cambell’s chicken soup. I’m not sure how they came up with the “doll” bit; I guess it could’ve looked a bit like cooked doll torsos if you squinted at it with your eyes out of focus.
But then again, maybe not.
I came away from the lunch with my usual buzz of pleasure at having just eaten an interesting and delicious meal. But this time the buzz had a certain edge. I just HAD to return for some more enigmatic eating.
As luck would have it, my friend Janelle phoned for a catch up the next day and I had no trouble persuading her to be my dinner partner in crime.
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| Bacterial dish Dinghu style |
Tempted though we were to order “sheet iron black pepper cow” and “sheet iron sleeve fish”, we could guess what they were and had eaten them before, so we passed them by.
“Chicken knee soft bone” sounded a bit cartilaginous for our tastes, so we bypassed that one too. In the end, two unusual sounding but competently translated dishes got the better of us.
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| Hot and sour fern root noodles |
“Cordyceps flowers” are, I think, actually dried shredded tiger lily buds. They were tossed in a light sesame flavoured sauce and served cold on a bed of julienned cucumber. Tasty!
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| Cordyceps flowers |
But my quest isn’t over yet. I’ll be back, and top of my list will be “Braised gusteau in stockpot”.
Gusteau? I had to Google that one, to rediscover that the recently deceased Chef Auguste Gusteau was Remy the rat’s idol in the movie Ratatouille.
I can’t wait to find out what the Spicy Joint has done with him.
Spicy Joint Restaurant
533 Dominion Road
Balmoral
Ph: 623 4938
Open for lunch and dinner.
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