A few of us on the Sichuan Cottage thread have decided to meet there for an early lunch at 11:30 this Sunday. All are welcome to join us…just please post here if you plan to attend so we’re sure to have a large enough table.
Hope you can make it!
Curlz
P.S. Do we call these HOdowns? 
A HOdown throwdown it is! See you there.
Bumping this to the top in case any of you other HOs want to join us for lunch! at 11:30 today…
So who was there, what did you eat, and how was it?
Let’s see…there were 14 of us and we killed the menu! 
I’m kidding! It was me, Seal, and Joon… We started with the West Lake Beef Chowder that you had mentioned because it intrigued all of us. Loved it! The white pepper really built up as I got a few spoonfuls in, and it was so good that I took a soup to go! Then we had the salt and pepper shrimp out of the shell (Seal’s recommendation) and the lamb w cumin, which is one of my go-to dishes in any Szechuan restaurant. Both were wonderful! The 3rd dish was one that Joon suggested… Fish in hot chili oil. It was an excellent choice and not nearly as spicy as we thought it might be, but we all enjoyed that as well. I particularly liked the mixed of textures in that dish, because those casserole like dishes are often all very soft. This had pieces of bok choy + crunchy beans sprouts and they really brought it up a level.
I’m thrilled to know there’s good Szechuan within close reach and I hope we can plan a bigger group outing for Chinese New Year!
Glad you liked it. I’ve had everything you mentioned except the shrimp. I liked the fish; Mark was less thrilled because he doesn’t like the brown pepper as much as I do.
If we’re going to do a Chinese New Year thing, we should start picking a date/time real soon now so people can make plans. Assuming we are aiming for a weekend, I will suggest either Saturday, 02/06, from 1PM on, or Sunday, 02/07, either 11:30AM, or after 4PM. (We’re also free during the week, but I suspect not everyone is.)
The 7th is the Super Bowl, which may matter to some… I could do lunch on 2/6…
The 6th sounds good. Then we can celebrate everything all together.
If it works for at least a few people, let’s start a new thread!
