Café China

13 E. 37th Street

(between Fifth and Madison Avenues)

cafechinanyc.com

If you wish to experience a 1920s intimate, Shanghai café atmosphere

And if you want to try unique, interesting, so-spicy-that-it-will-make-you-tear-just from-looking-at-it Sichuan food at a Michelin-rated restaurant, then Café China is a must-try for you!

Went for their attractively priced lunch special (from $9 to $13), which runs daily from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

My throat was a bit scratchy and the air was nippy with it being autumn, so I decided to order the three-pepper chicken. Did not disappoint. Extremely flavorful and cleared out my sinuses right away. I was however careful not to eat the red chili peppers and the cook was fine with preparing it medium spicy. I cannot imagine having it as spicy as the kitchen would normally cook it!

Helpful Hint #1: When eating very spicy dishes, I find it helpful to have a drink containing some sort of dairy so that it may cut the heat. I ordered the Vietnamese iced coffee.

It comes as if it were French-pressed coffee, with condensed milk on the bottom.

When it’s ready, mix the contents in the cup. Liked the fact that it's glass so that you can see the liquid change color.

Then, you quickly pour the contents into a Mason jar. Emphasis on the word “quickly” as when I was pouring it slowly the coffee started to spill on the table. Luckily the server was there to jump in and take over the pouring and right the situation.

Delicious! It was the perfect accompaniment with my three-pepper chicken. Without it, I don’t know if I would have been able to eat my food, much less taste it.

My dining companion chose the savory tofu with shredded pork. She noted it was good, but wished the dish came with more green vegetables. However, she did enjoy it enough to leave an empty bowl.

The lunch special also came with the option of soup or salad. For the soup, you had the choice between seaweed or hot and sour. As I was already having enough spicy food for my meal, I went for the seaweed soup.

It was amazing! Made me think of home as it tasted just like how my mom makes it.

I had also heard about their spicy duck tongue appetizer—it was featured on the Cooking Channel’s show Unique Eats. As it was touted as such a “unique” dish, I thought I should try it and luckily my friend was feeling just as adventurous as I.

It was a cold appetizer, and it was spicy. I could taste the peppercorns heat my tongue after swallowing a piece of duck. However, it had a very rubbery texture and worse yet contained a lot of cartilage. Glad I tried it, so that I know never to order it again.

In spite of my lack of enthusiasm for the dish, I must confess that I did take home the leftover duck tongue and three-pepper chicken. (What's even more stranger is the fact that I almost never take home leftovers.) It made though for a very nice dinner on that cold, autumn night. I did however make the mistake of not having any ice cream or milk in the fridge, so my eyes teared quite freely that evening.

For dessert, we ordered the coconut sorbet in a coconut shell.

Pretty sure it wasn’t an actual coconut shell; have a suspicion it was a bowl shaped like a coconut shell. But it was the perfect ending to our Sichuan meal.

Will definitely go back to try their other menu options, as well as experience their dinner vibe.

Service: Very attentive and helpful until the lunch crowd started to arrive. I then noticed a more harried tone to our questions when we ordered dessert.

Helpful Hint #2: Go early, as the place fills up very quickly. It’s reputedly a popular lunch and dinner spot, and since it does not take reservations (for less than 4) I was not surprised to see a line waiting for a table when we left at around 1 p.m.

One odd note: Restaurant was unable to provide white rice; they only had brown rice available. I was told that I would have had to wait another 10 minutes. (We had arrived at 11 a.m. and since we had spent some time reviewing the menu, I would not have received my rice until 11:30 a.m.) My dining companion did note that it’s very strange for a Chinese restaurant not to have white rice cooked and ready to be served when it opened. The server was apologetic, but did not seem to be really giving me an option as he made this announcement when our food arrived (with two bowls of brown rice in his hands) and not when I ordered. And since I didn’t wish to make my friend wait to eat her food, I decided to go with the brown rice that the server had at the ready. So make of that what you will.

Final thoughts: My assessment is to go early, but not too early if you want your white rice!