Si Chuan Eating House, Jalan Sultan

My, my, how quickly do things change. We came here (100 Sultan Road #01-09) tonight expecting to get Sichuan hot pot from Jin Huang, but when we walked in, things were quite different. They had carpeting. It was cleaner. They had pots stacked up in the kitchen. The hot pot meat spread was all gone. And alas, the sign and name of the place had changed. We asked the guy to explain and he told us that these guys took over four days ago, replacing many of the things, including the kitchen staff. It was still Sichuan food, but it was mainly cooked dishes instead (there was still hot pot if you wanted it, but the ingredients were all in set packages rather than a spread). And to our dismay, this place was run by the Mapo Doufu people just around the corner (why would they open another shop so close to it??).

Well, we still decided to try some of the food anyway, with a couple bowls of cold noodles plus some pan fried dumplings and pumpkin things. To my surprise, I rather liked the taste of it all...in fact, even more than their Mapo Doufu brethren (at least, as best as I could remember them). Sure, the noodles were overdone, but the right combination of seasonings overcame that shortcoming for me. Hey that wasn't as bad as I thought, even if the kitchen staff absent-mindedly completely forgot to make half of our dishes. Either way, it's too bad that Jin Huang shut down, as I was really getting to like that place (it didn't even make it past the one year mark!). Another one bites the dust.