searching for szechuan

Our favourite Szechuan Chinese restaurant of years and years and years has changed its owners and chef and is no longer our favourite. Capitol Hill Restaurant in North Burnaby has been our family's gathering place for family lunches and suppers for as long as I can remember, about a dozen years I guess. Their fresh, consistent and brilliantly delicious food at reasonable prices made them a winner. I even took my work friends there. City employees know their food. They nicknamed Capitol Hill, "the Ly Thai of the North," which is fine praise indeed.

So now my family is searching for another good Szechuan restaurant. We crave the intensity and variety of a perfect hot and sour soup, the dark allure of spicy sauteed green beans with minced pork (or not, for our outings with vegetarian friends), spicy squid that makes you remember that fried food doesn't have to be gloopy, and hot pot with eggplant and tofu good enough to break the heart of anyone who comes home from 2 years in Africa, only to find the staff at the place they dreamed about has gone on holiday for 2 weeks. (That actually happened a few years ago, and we still talk about it.)

We have decided to go out and try a few places. We'll know it when we find it. Suggestions are welcome. Please make them good. Here are some things we are not looking for:

• sweet and sour anything
• lemon chicken
• brown sauce that tastes exactly the same on everything
• crispy wontons
• limp vegetables
• diced chicken (that's just my bias because it reminds me of food that comes out of a can)

I'll let you know about our discoveries, our hits and misses. It will be an adventure I'm sure. I'm already in my own version of Africa, dreaming of tofu eggplant hot pot, hoping it won't take 2 years.

question: where do you eat Chinese food?

mompoet - wok-deprived