Old Szechuan Restaurant

Old Szechuan Restaurant
10703 – 103 Street
Edmonton, AB

During my initial post of my BC Day/Heritage Day long weekend in Edmonton, I made a remark about The Lingnan, whose claim to include being part of a show called The Family Restaurant: The Quons. In that post, I wrote “I know, I know, this isn’t authentic Chinese…” Now, here is a key detail, based on ingredient availability and taste, it is almost a guarantee dishes will change (in fact, I am looking forward for a book to be published later this year on this topic. Check details about it here). So, on my last night in Edmonton, after a visit to the Devonian Botanical Gardens, a friend of Trinh (whom I am going to refer as “K”) called, which, in turn, checked with me. While initially I didn’t have any expectations as to what to eat or where to eat, this time, I made a selfish request: Can we try a Chinese restaurant? Given K’s background, it seems like a good idea: to find something Chinese but not Chinese Canadian. (Sorry, Trinh, I knew you wanted to try something “Western”!).

Granted, I might not be the best person to qualify Chinese food, given I wasn’t raised in China. Even worst was the fact we were in a Szechuan restaurant (as the name suggest) rather than a Cantonese one. However, there is one note and one wildcard: Despite I didn’t grew up there my mom can cook Chinese food and I enjoyed eating her cooking. As for my wildcard in the visit to a Szechuan restaurant… According to my mom, she grew up not far from the Szechuan region and, as a result, if she wanted to, she can really crank up the heat. In fact, once in a while she made her own version of mapo tofu!

One thing was pretty obvious when we arrived: if you go to this restaurant, you don’t go there for the looks. It is pretty obvious it has seen better days but, if you have read this blog long enough, visuals is not among my priorities. So, with that in mind, we sat in a table in the middle of the restaurant. Now, here is the “interesting” thing: while most of the customers were obviously Asian, there was one table of Caucasian customers. Alas, I couldn’t really see what they ordered but what I did notice was that they enjoyed their food. At that point, it made me think… Does authenticity matter, when you see a person smiling, enjoying the food and having fun with their dining companions? I think I am digressing here…

As for ordering, we took sort of an approach of everybody ordering one dish. Me wanting to make sure to have that yardstick, I ordered the mapo tofu. However, they thought I was cheating, as if it was a dish we had to order regardless. I didn’t budge so, in the end, had….

Dan Dan Noodles. In a way, K thought we had to order this so I just went along. If I were to compare it to the one we had in City Temple of Shanghai, I would have to say these are different beast but with the additional note that I prefer the one here over CToS. One one side, the noddles had a different texture, I felt it was more “spring-y”. On the other side, the broth wasn’t as thick and, the interesting note, was that, rather than having a peanut taste (as in CToS), it had a sesame-y taste. And, oh, it did have some heat. After drinking some of the broth, I had no option but to go to the washroom to wipe off some sweat! (Sorry, it is not a pretty picture but this is something I warn people when I go to eat in restaurants serving spicy food: I will sweat a lot!).

Moving to the vegetables (hey, you have to have some!), this is a case of a vegetable that I know its Chinese name but I do not know its English name. In this case, a simple dish of stir-fried vegetables. If there was something that disappointed here, it would have been this one. However, it might not be 100% due to restaurant fault. If you look at the vegetable itself, it looks… Old? As a result, it didn’t have that sweetness and freshness of fresher produce.

Stir fried sliced pork and squid. Pork… Did somebody say pork? I will have to be straight on this one and say I am bias towards any dish pork. However, I can also see why some people might not like it: you could still see the fat. So, if you are watching your daily calorie consumption, this dish is definitely NOT for you. Still, you might not know what you might be missing! But the part that surprised me somewhat was the squid: It had a really nice texture! See, squid is really perishable so, if you don’t handle/prepare it carefully, not to mention prepare it carefully, it can go all ways around. Here, it still had some slight rubbery texture, enough to show it had a bite. And, yes, there was some hint of spiciness in the back…

Finally, the key dish… Mapo tofu… Yes, that is an actual piece of chili! After the first bite, I kept sweating more and more. Yes, the heat was there but there was something that took a little bit long to manifest: the “numbness” sensation. Yes, those characteristics were there! In fact, if it wasn’t because I was quite full by then, I might have had fought with K on the remaining pieces! OK, joking aside, the tofu was neither too soft (i.e., silken tofu) nor the harder variety. It would crumble easily if under pressure but you could have easily eaten it without “biting” into it. One part that might throw people off, partially because they expect it, was the absence of minced meat. Now, there was some but you couldn’t really tell unless you looked closely. As for me, it wasn’t something that important so I am good with it.

I will have to say that I was quite impressed by the food served. Now, it still had some minor details here and there and while comparison to a lot of (fancier?) Chinese restaurants in Richmond, BC, would be an unfair one, at the same time, for food only perspective, it can hold ground of its own. In my case, if I can convince a large enough party, I can see myself coming back here! (Not by myself, of course…)

Tagged under: Chinese • Edmonton • Pork