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2024-05-13
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We came here for a celebration dinner. A one star Michelin restaurant would be very nice. Looking forward to super spicy and super numbing sensations, and more sophisticated taste elements.That said, my closest exprience to authentic Sichuan food is the Sichuan govermemt rep office in Beijing, and some good Sichuan restaurants in Beijing and in Hong Kong.The dishes at Fugara tastes nothing like them. But it rings a bell? It is exactly like the Sichuan takeouts in the USA!We went by the recommend
That said, my closest exprience to authentic Sichuan food is the Sichuan govermemt rep office in Beijing, and some good Sichuan restaurants in Beijing and in Hong Kong.
The dishes at Fugara tastes nothing like them. But it rings a bell? It is exactly like the Sichuan takeouts in the USA!
We went by the recommendations of our waiter. We declined the black truffle chicken, knowing European black truffles have either lost all their taste by the time you get to them In a Hong Kong restaurant, or you will be getting mainland Chinese truffles which has no taste.
We also declined the dungeness crab because it was too large for two.
The first dish that came out was the egg plants. It was dreadful, sitting in a pool of peanut sauce or sesame sauce. It tastes like it was made with a lot of peanut butter. We stopped debating it because the second dish arrived, the paper thin beef slices that legend has it that you can hold it up to a lamp and see the light cast onto it. It was smothered in a sweet soy based sauce. And the beef slices are considerably thicker for light to pass through, as in other places. But I actually liked this slightly thicker version.
A dish of deep dried bitter melon pieces, covered in powdered salted egg yolks arrived. Although recommended, it only now dawned on us that it is not a Sichuan dish. It was nice but other restaurants have them too. But at $300? It is quite steep.
At this point we asked our nice waiter over. He tried hard to please customers by engaging them in food conversations. But we said so far we still need to taste authentic Sichuan, and given the eggplants we need to say we don't want the American take out style of Dan Dan noodles. We don't want them bathing in peanut butter sauce or sesame paste sauce. Can he please alert the kitchen.. At this point he said in that case it is much better you guys order another noodle dish.
Finally the recommended bone in beef rib arrived. Again there is nothing Sichuan about it and is served in many restaurants across Hong Kong. Even in Bangkok! Compared with others, this dish is not well prepared. The tough piece of beef needs to be slow cooked until it is really tender. I would say another 45 minutes in a slow oven would have done it.
May be we should not have followed the recommendations of the waiter for those dishes and go for the Sichuan standard dishes. Well, this is a one star Michelin restaurant and we just thought we should listen to what the waiter recommends as their best dishes. Besides, the Sichuan dishes they have on the menu were all the American stardard one.
We also stayed away from their whole fish dishes which costs around 900 dollars but which uses the cheap mandarin fish (桂花魚)。
What was Michelin thinking ? I just checked. Michelin rates and publishes their guide on restaurants in Chengdu. It isn't as if they didn't know this travesty! Very bad show.
To be fair, may be it is just false advertisement. They should have made it known they serve the American takeout version of Sichuan dishes. Judging from the large number of favorable comments they definitely have that kind of following. After all, American takeout version of Sichuan dishes must be nostalgic to many. Just not me and not at these prices.
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