Laura Zastrow
The bento box is a generous lunch that even includes a trip to the dessert bar.
One of the great pleasures in lunch is the noontime specials menu at your average Chinese restaurant. Format used to be fairly predictable: a roundup of some “greatest hits” entrees (think chicken with broccoli) that came with choice of soup (egg drop or hot and sour) and an eggroll. It wasn’t exciting so much as American melting pot comfort food.
Lunch specials like these are harder to find now. The entrees, once resolutely American Chinese, have branched out to encompass dishes like pork stomach with hot chili sauce.
The lunch special menu at Taste of Sichuan, on State Street, is unusually expansive. It’s called lunch special bento box and it arrives in a largish lacquered box, full of compartments. One square contains a couple of jiaozi (dumplings, pan-fried), another your choice of ox tongue and tripe with chili sauce or steamed white meat chicken with chili sauce. Diners also may choose from among four soups (wonton, egg drop, hot and sour, or seafood). The roster of 22 entrees leans heavily to Sichuan style, with 18 of the 22 bearing a chili icon, meaning, yeah it’s spicy.
At $10, this is a generous lunch that even includes a trip to the dessert bar. The gelatin squares and orange slices are not too exciting, but it’s worth grabbing a couple almond cookies.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let’s start with the choice between ox tongue and tripe or steamed chicken with chili sauce. I did try the ox tongue and tripe, but it probably doesn’t mean much that I preferred the steamed chicken. The pieces of chicken are served cold, skin on. And the chili oil — also cold, but also sweet and spicy and undoubtedly oily — is the perfect complement to the chicken and rich fatty skin. Despite the spiciness of the oil, this appetizer is sometimes the cooling agent against some of the spicy entrees and has become my favorite part of the bento lunch.
Jiaozi are similar to the frozen variety found in supermarkets. The meat filling was so bland I couldn’t identify the meat. But pan-fried dumplings dipped in soy vinegar sauce have to be a lot worse than these are before I won’t eat them. (Plus there’s a range of different sauces for them on the dessert bar.)
Soup edged closer to the line of I’m-not-going-to-bother-to-eat-this. Egg drop was bland and greasy, while the wonton featured thin, torn wontons with an unremarkable gristly filling in a greasy broth. Hot and sour was the best, very typical of the version found at a basic storefront Chinese takeout. I never hit Taste of Sichuan on a day when there was seafood soup to try.
Entrees make a stronger showing. Mapo tofu comes with silky tofu and plenty of minced pork. It’s plenty spicy, but is missing any of that numbing menthol zip from Sichuan peppercorns, a hallmark of the dish.
Fish fillet with pickled pepper is good, though very hot and spicy. The white fish used doesn’t stand up to this lacerating sauce. Using a firmer fish with more assertive flavor — say, catfish — would give this dish more balance, but I liked it anyway.
The “spicy fried chicken” comes in little fried and battered pieces and is spicy (very spicy). There is more crisp golden batter than there is chicken. The bits, not even nugget sized, but nug-lettes — are served on rice; with no vegetables or sauce to round it out. Still, quite tasty.
The list of the other lunch entrees may remind Monty Python fans of the Spam, Spam, bacon and Spam bit — there’s pork: twice cooked sliced pork, shredded pork, farm style fried pork, red braised pork, sauteed pickled beans with minced pork, and pan fried pork intestine. The pork is good — I liked the rich twice cooked sliced pork, which comes with fried peppers and onions.
Dishes like beef with cumin, kung pao chicken, General Tso’s chicken and sesame chicken round out the offerings. Vegetarians can look to spicy and sour shredded potato, or eggplant with chili sauce.
Those looking for more vegetables might need to order off the dinner menu, although when I tried to order the “Green vegetable with oyster sauce” — perhaps better translated as Chinese greens with oyster sauce — to supplement the bento with veggies, they were out.
In the evening, in addition to a wide range of Sichuan entrees and a handful of American Chinese standards, the restaurant serves hot pot. But that is a meal for another day.
Taste of Sichuan
515 State St.; 608-819-6780
tasteofsichuanwi.com
11 am-10 pm Sun.-Thurs., 11 am-10:30 pm Fri.-Sat. Lunch specials served 11 am-3 pm.
$5-$30, lunch $10
