Restaurant Review - Sichuan Gourmet

In the unlikely location on the first floor of a strip mall in Framingham lurks the best Chinese restaurant in Boston.  It is that rarity - an authentic Sichuan restaurant.  The place is very simple, with vast portions and absurdly low prices.  We over-ordered wildly and still ended up with a bill of less than $25 a head.

Hot and soup soup was properly made with a good meat stock (3/10).  Impressive was roast beef and tendon with chilli sauce, the strips of beef having good texture and the lively sauce enhancing rather than overwhelming the flavour of the meat (3/10).  Salt crusted prawns were served in their shells and cooked through nicely, well seasoned and simple (2/10).  Tea smoked duck was pleasant (2/10) though perhaps a little bland given the rest of the dishes.  JinGu fish fillets were excellent, the pieces of fish served with a spicy sauce involving proper Sichuan peppercorns as the usual chilli (4/10).  Also good was beef and Napa cabbage with another spicy sauce (2/10). 

The only real blemish in the cooking was steamed bak choi with garlic that was cooked too long and so was not as tender as it should have been (1/10).  We ended the meal with potato cakes with bean paste filling.  Service was pleasant and overall this was quite a find.  I preferred this to the Sichuan restaurant I was taken to in Beijing a year ago.