My friend Sharon is a vegetarian, and Dainty Sichuan is where we always go with a few friends when she is back in Melbourne for a visit. No need to worry about bland or boring vegetarian dishes at Dainty Sichuan: the flavours here are bold and eager to make an impact.
We have accumulated a list of favourites over time, and we had the usual suspects on Friday. First up, stir-fried tea tree mushrooms. The mushrooms are tender, and the garlic shoots provide a nice crunch.
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| stir-fried tea tree mushrooms |
Next, fish-flavoured eggplant. Despite the name, this is actually a vegetarian dish - the eggplants are flavoured with seasonings that were traditionally used to cook fish. These saucy deep-fried eggplants are almost liquefied inside, and utterly delicious.
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| fish-flavoured eggplant |
The spicy tofu threads is a cold dish, and it's a good one that spurs on the appetite for more rice.
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| spicy tofu threads |
And of course, the mapo tofu. This normally has pork in it, so we asked for it without. There's a lot of zing in this one, thanks to the abundance of Sichuan pepper, and the tofu is silky soft.
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| mapo tofu |
The garlic cucumber offers a cool respite from the heat, while still giving an unabashed kick to the tastebuds.
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| garlic cucumber |
Dainty Sichuan can be an engagingly spicy affair, depending on what is ordered, but for those who shy away from heat, the mild dishes are enjoyable too. If I do have one gripe it would be that the use of oil can sometimes appear quite liberal - but I don't come here often enough for that to pose a health hazard, so that's alright!
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