Finally, dan dan mein in London!!

Somewhat on a whim, I ended up in Bar Shu (巴山) in Chinatown with Simon and his lovely girlfriend Lisa the other week. I’ve heard so many good things about Bar Shu, tauted as one of the first genuinely good Sichuan (or Szechuan) restaurants in London, but had never managed to make it there given that most of my friends would be massively scared, and you really do need a crowd for this kind of food. But Simon’s girlfriend is Chinese too, and when they invited me, I was straight on the phone booking a table.

I got addicted to Sichuan food in Hong Kong, after Nic introduced us all to the magical Sijie (四姐) Private Kitchen in Wanchai. I can’t get enough of the immense spiciness coupled with completely numbed lips from the Sichuan peppercorns, it just raises your heartbeat a little. And the dish I am most addicted to is dan dan mein (擔擔麵) - noodles in a spiced soup, with some more spiced minced pork on top. Surprisingly, it was difficult to get a good version of this even in Hong Kong, and I regularly got into trouble by going to 小南國 in Central, a pretty posh place, and only ordering a HK$20 bowl of noodles, so I have given up even looking for it in London. Until now of course!!!

So, the Bar Shu dan dan mein. The very first impression is that it is ridiculously expensive - £4.50 per serving, and the serving is absolutely tiny!!! About the size of a normal Chinese rice bowl!!! This was made worse by the fact that the noodles were really actually pretty good – lovely flavour in the soup, lovely topping with a little sautéed garlic, the noodles themselves just the right side of chewy – you just had to eat it really really slowly to make it last the whole meal! If the serving was about 4 times bigger, I would definitely be a regular.

We did try some other dishes there. Simon’s choice was a not so spicy Fish Fragrant Aubergine (魚香茄子), which was not particularly fragrant with fish, but the aubergines were lovely and smooth:), which was not particularly fragrant with fish, but the aubergines were lovely and smooth:

We also had the very traditional Boiled Sea Bass in Chilli Oil (水煮魚), which is as tasty as the Sijie version which I love so much. But the waiter was in somewhat of a hurry to fish out (no pun intended!!) the chilli and peppercorns that I didn’t have time to take a picture, so I substitute one from Sijie instead!! It really isn’t as spicy as it looks, bonus is if they put any beansprouts or glass noodles at the bottom. Mmmm!

The verdict? Really very authentic stuff, and really very tasty, but oh is it expensive!! The fish itself was £28 by itself!! Time to book in some time with Sijie for my little visit in Hong Kong methinks…