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London,
Evening Standard rating
Reader rating
Description: "A must for any fan of Sichuan cooking" -- this much-acclaimed Soho yearling continues to make waves with its "fiery" and "strikingly different" cuisine.
Food: 
Service: 
Ambience: 
Phone: 020 7287 6688
Website: http://www.bar-shu.co.uk
Good for: Good food, Ambience.
Payment options:
THE first few months of any year are usually a fallow period for restaurant openings, when little of interest happens.
The recent arrival of the excellent Ambassador in Exmouth Market (reviewed last week) seemed to mark the annual turning point.
This week Bar Shu explodes onto the scene, completely changing the face of Chinese restaurants in London. I love the place, and keep wanting to go back.
Sichuan (or Szechwan) food, which is what Bar Shu serves, is not unknown in London, but this new Soho restaurant, on the site that was once L'Epicure, is in a different league from anything that has gone before.
In the kitchen are five chefs brought over from the south-western Chinese province, including head chef Fu Wenhong, a cooking master from the capital, Chengdu.
The interior, which seats 200 customers over three floors, has been decorated with a mix of intricate, fragrant wood carvings and Perspex panels showing swirling patterns of bright colour - including the apposite chilli red.
I got the feeling that owner Shao Wei is an entrepreneur with fingers in many pies, including the antiques business.
He has had the good sense to appoint Fuchsia Dunlop as consultant. In 1994 Dunlop took up a British Council Scholarship at Sichuan University and then entered the professional training course at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine - the first foreigner ever to do so.
She subsequently wrote Sichuan Cookery (Penguin Books £12.99), an extraordinary work which I can guarantee will not be replicated in your cookbook collection, however many books you own.
Dunlop has had input into Bar Shu's menu, which displays vivid (or should that be garish?) photographs on glossy card - traditional, apparently - with descriptions of the dishes written in a minuscule typeface.
She is currently working out suggested set meals to help customers get the best out of Sichuan's dynamic, fiery, fragrant traditions.
If you don't like chillies you probably won't find Bar Shu a very rewarding place to eat, but heat is not really the point here.
It is more about the layering of flavours and the alchemic effect that the consumption of one dish can have on the appreciation of another.
Also, among the more flamboyant assemblies that are ankle-deep in Sichuan "facing-heaven" chillies, there are other dishes which have a mellow, melting effect summed up as "lychee flavour" and soothing items such as the soups - which are usually eaten at the end of the meal to refresh the palate.
We tried two, which were brought at any old point in the parade of dishes.
One comprised beef balls in a delicate broth and the other was of chicken with silver ear fungus and medicinal milk vetch root.
They were superb, the latter quite eerily delicious and managing to achieve a singular kind of liquescence.
Sichuan pepper (hua jiao) is a distinguishing spice. It has a woody aroma and the almost narcotic effect of numbing and tingling the lips and tongue.
Chillies eaten with or after Sichuan pepper have a less potent immediate effect on the palate. To put this notion to the test, try the dish of baked sea bass in spicy soup.
Some individual dishes seem highly priced but they are served in quantity - enough for at least four to share.
Other dishes tried over two dinners (so far) I would enthusiastically recommend are: appetiser of duck rolls where meat is wrapped around salted duck egg yolks and thinly sliced; slithery buckwheat noodles with chicken in a hot-sour sauce, which looked nothing like its photograph.
Also to be recommended are the Sichuan chicken, which is heavenly and will tingle your tongue; "pock-marked Mother Chen's" beancurd; Cos lettuce in sesame sauce and seeds and the smokedmeat platter.
At the second dinner Reg and I also asked for Man-and-Wife offal slices, but they never materialised.
Pickled vegetables, briefly brined in the style known as "water-shower", should be part of any order, and another vegetable dish that shouldn't be missed is deep-fried green beans tossed with minced pork and tangy preserved mustard greens.
We also liked water spinach stir-fried with garlic.
A main course of Dongpo pork knuckle was fabulous. It is named after Song Dynasty poet Su Dongpo, who so loved pork that he wrote a poem about it.
Here is mine: "Dongpo pork/ Just get it on your fork/ Or you might prefer to use chopsticks." A haiku really.
There is lots I want to, and will, go back for. For example braised beef with bamboo shoots, fragrant and hot crab, steamed turbot with salted chillies and fireexploded kidney flowers.
I also mean to drop in to eat street snacks of dan-dan noodles, crescent dumplings in chilli-oil sauce and sweet potato noodles with mixed meats and offal.
And then there is the Sichuan hot-pot (huo guo). But that will be another story.
Bar Shu has a predominantly Chinese clientele, thrilled to find well executed what is now the most fashionable food in China.
Staff are helpful, in some cases sweetly groovy, and they are numerous. If you want to drink something more speedy than tea, there is a well-thought-out and not over-priced wine list.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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