In the holding-tank of Portland restaurants, more Asian eateries continue to fill our culinary narrative in bold, declarative ways. Consider the arrival of Sichuan Kitchen, which opened two weeks ago, in a prime Congress Street location. I went with a friend shortly after its debut, and we had a few dishes from the concise menu. The Zhong dumplings, for instance, filled with pork were amazing: the dumpling dough was rich and the concentrated soy sauce with Szechuan peppercorns and chili in which to roll around the dumplings, conspired to make these some of the tastiest in town. Our second dish, the twice cooked pork, however, was bland—barely any heat, and the tender pieces of meat could have benefited by an assertive marinade before cooking. A third dish, this time white fish with pickled greens, which our waitress raved about, was disappointing: the swai fish–an Asian farmed catfish, which can be a problematic fish if it doesn’t have exemplary farming practices—was the blandest white fish, helped a bit from the pickled vegetables.
Zhong pork dumplings
In full disclosure, I’m a big fan of Empire Chinese, Portland’s answer to Chinatown-quality Cantonese cooking with its clear, sweet flavors and zesty preparations. And other benchmarks for Asian food as we know it in Maine include Tempo Dulu, Bao Bao, Miyake, Boda—all in Portland—and Long Grain and Suzuki in Camden and Rockland.
Does Sichuan Kitchen rate? I’ve gone back three times trying to determine that. I want it to like it, and I think they need more time to settle in and figure out their audience. They’re got the heritage and the know-how. But so far, I find some of the dishes flat while others are far better. The kitchen needs to display all the complex characteristics of real Sichuan cooking with its layers of flavors: spicy, flowery (Sichuan peppercorns), salty, sour, sweet, bitter, smoky.
Clocwise: cold chicken platter, fried eggplant and gong bao chicken
Still, the menu offers authentic Szechuan dishes, prepared by the owner’s father, a banquet chef from his native Chengdu. The kitchen staff is all Chinese, with few speaking any English. As our waitress joked, “I take the orders in English and it gets up to the kitchen in Chinese.”
Right off I think they’re editing the Szechuan flavor profile a bit too much—perhaps watered down for American tastes. Those bold flavors of sweet-to sour-spicy are muted if at all in the dishes I tried. That’s a mistake. Give it to us full blast is how we all reacted to the food on the second visit.
On that visit our group of five ordered some 8 dishes. They were good enough but not extraordinary. Plating and presentation lack color (much like the interior of the plain-Jane dining room, with the unfortunate soft-drink cooler in the rear). It was all an even brown with scallions snipped, chopped or sliced on top of the food as the only color.
The plain-Jane dining room
That Friday the place was packed with diners who looked like they convened at a convention for millennials. I observed how they seemed to enjoy the food, lapping up every morsel quite happily. The scene reminded me of the old days in New York when we were discovering Szechuan, Hunan and Mandarin restaurants that opened on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the late 70s. We were all like hungry daredevils (students and 20- somethings) piling in to sample these exotic dishes.
We had those dumplings again. This time there was less sauce in the bowl, and there are no condiments on the table such as soy or chili oil. You’re meant to mix the food around in the sauce that’s in the serving bowl. The pork was deeply flavored but it needed more of the concentrated soy mixture.
Clockwise: cloud-ear mushrooms, ants climbing a tree and mapo tofu
The cucumber salad, however, was fresh and delicious with a little heat and enough soy sauce mix to make it interesting. The slices of cukes were crisp, slightly hot and loaded with layers of pungency.
Cucumber salad
The classic Szechuan dishes of mapo tofu, ants climbing a tree, stir-fried green beans, a salad of black mushrooms, gong bao chicken, braised pork ribs and sweet and sour sautéed cabbage were a mixed bag—some interesting and others flat.
The mapo tofu lacked the heat usually packed into this dish with a wallop of hot peppers in a chili-oil based red sauce. The dish looked more like a bowl of porridge.
The famous Sichuan dish of Ants Climbing a Tree is a noodle dish made with ground pork that’s sautéed in a fortified soy sauce (rice wine, soy, sesame oil, ginger, scallions) that’s mixed typically with glass or bean thread noodles. Some chefs use more sauce than others. This version was rather dry and could have benefited from a better bathing in bean paste or rice wine vinegar, light and dark soy and Sichuan peppers. This is a very pleasing dish generally but I was less impressed with the kitchen’s take on it.
Pork trio: clockwise–pork in bean paste, yu-xiang pork ribs and pork buns
The gong bao chicken (aka kung pao chicken) was woefully bland. It’s a classic Sichuan dish with heat and pungency. Had the chicken been marinated in Shaoxing wine, it might have lifted the spirits of this dull dish. With a simple sauté of diced chicken, peanuts, vegetables and Sichuan peppercorns, it missed the mark, without even a hint of sweet-sour boldness.
Nor did we take to the dish of yu-xiang pork ribs. It’s described on the menu as flash-fried pork ribs paired with the gentle heat of chili peppers and chayote for crunch. What came out was a soupy stew of desultory pieces of pork on the bone. It lacked dimensions of flavor that we all anticipated, hoped for.
The black mushroom salad was interesting though I’m not sure if I’d order it again. The stir-fried green beans were perfect: crisp and garlicky. Sweet and sour cabbage salad was the best dish of all we tried because it had that amalgam of spices and flavors that make Sichuan cooking so good.
On my third visit with a friend, we ordered those fabulous pork dumplings again and the pork buns, the latter being a tad dry. We tried the eggplant salad (I like Empire’s better) and pork in sweet bean paste. That was a good meal with brighter moments than previous visits.
Like any new restaurant, the Sichuan Kitchen is still feeling its way as they present to Portlanders dishes that we’re not used to here. For not it’s worth exploring on your own since it seems to get more interesting
Sichuan Kitchen, 612 Congress St., Portland, ME 207-536-7226 www.sichuankitchenportland.com
Note that the phone number as listed on the website has a + sign in front of the number; this reads as a out of the country call.
Rating: Loaded with potential
Ambiance: plain and basic
Seating: comfortable
Service: good, very friendly
Parking: on street
$$$: moderate
