Bashuge Traditional Szechuan Restaurant, Carnegie

I've noticed that I have a subconscious aversion to writing about Chinese restaurants and Chinese food, even though it's the type of cuisine I eat the most (being Chinese and all). I have many photos from Chinese restaurants in my backlog but every time I look at them, I somehow get discouraged and don't feel like writing about them. Maybe it's the fact that whenever I go out with my family, it's a table full of dishes I can't translate and I never get to see the bill so I don't even know how much things cost. Maybe it's also because dad gets annoyed when I take too long taking photos and they never turn out that good. Whatever it is, it's incomprehensible so I'm about to change that. I will start blogging about the Chinese places I go to starting from today. (I'm cheating a bit though since I didn't go to today's restaurant with my family). :P

The other day after visiting Ikea with a few friends, we decided to eat in Carnegie as it was close to their house. Our number one choice was Shyun, a fantastic Japanese restaurant just off Koornang Rd but when we got there, we found the store closed for renovation. Apparently the back door was open for business but we didn't want to risk it so decided to walk a bit further to find a meal. We ended up at Bashuge Traditional Szechuan Restaurant.


After seeing msihua's blog post from 2010, it seems the interior of the restaurant has been renovated. It now has booth like cushiony seats that glow with red and even the walls and ceiling are colourful. In fact, it gives quite a Christmassy feel.


Yuye ordered a coconut drink ($3.50) which is essentially watered down, sweetened coconut cream. Yuye and I love it to bits and order it nearly every time we're at a Chinese restaurant but most of my Malaysian friends can't comprehend the idea.


I decided to be different this time and ordered a herbal tea (王老吉 -wang lao ji) for $3 which tastes likes sweetened grass jelly. A bit too sweet for some people, but I like the taste. It's meant to help with digestion but with the sugar content, it's probably not that good anyway. :P


There were so many things to choose from we ended up ordering too much which always tend to happen at Chinese restaurants. The dish that everyone agreed on was the HUGE spicy fish stew for $23.80(酸菜鱼 - suan cai yu, literally meaning pickles and fish) which can feed at least 2 people comfortably. It had beautifully seasoned soup that goes very well with the rice, perfectly tender and boneless fish fillets as well as an abundance of vermicelli and bean sprouts, all topped with Chinese pickles. There were both green and red chillies in the dish, but the green ones were hard to find so a few people accidentally ate them. Traditionally, this dish was more sour and a little less chilli but this version was also fantastic.


The next dish everyone wanted to try was the double cooked pork belly ($18.80). Well, it was more like Yuye's recommendation because pork belly is his favourite food in the world. The pork belly is cooked twice so that most of the oil from the fatty meat is gone and it's cooked with a red and green capsicums, spring onions and a lot of garlic. It's not as oily a dish as it looks.


As I didn't take a photo of the menu, I don't really remember what this next dish was called in English. In Chinese it's just stewed beef (红烧牛肉 - hong shao niu rou) for $17.80. It came with stewed beef brisket type beef and broccoli, although I remember distinctly that the menu said it came with mushrooms. I guess they ran out but since everyone wanted some green veggies, no one was opposed to it. The beef was a bit tough and dry, but the taste was very nice.


The last dish we ordered was the stewed eggplant for $13.80 (鱼香茄子 - yu xiang qie zi). It was a very oily dish I found and the eggplants were a bit too mushy for me. I liked the same dish at No.1 Delicious more although Bashuge's version wasn't bad by any means. It was a little sour and a little bit chilli as well.



We ordered 4 dishes between 5 people and it was way too much to eat. We ended up taking a little bit of each dish back home. I was so full I could hardly walk which is what happens to me all the time it seems.

Even though Bashuge's dishes have their flaws, overall it was a great meal and I would definitely return here for another chilli filled meaty meal.

Bashuge
Phone: (03) 9568 8687
74 Koornang Rd, Carnegie VIC 3163


Bashuge Traditional Szechuan Restaurant on Urbanspoon



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10 comments:

  1. I love that coconut drink too :) There's this spicy fish dish that I love when we go out for sichuan food. It's the one that's poached in oil. shui zhu yu. I'm sure you know it. It's the best. The pickle and fish stew looks really good. I'm so into pickled veggies!

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  2. @Choux-Fleur, you have good taste XD Yes I know that spicy fish dish. We order that quite a bit too, just not this time because Yuye doesn't really like it :(

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  3. What a great looking restaurant. The decor is very contemporary and not what I would have expected from the outside. Despite having spent a fair bit of time in Hong Kong for business I never really know what tov order in a Chinese restaurant because everything was ordered for me. Great food but I don't know what the dishes are called! I'll have to try some of these next time. GG

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  4. I find it really hard to write about yum cha restaurants because you never know how much anything costs and everyone is starving :P

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  5. The eggplant wasn't as oily as when geoff ate it the next day as leftovers hahaha

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  6. What scrumptious looking food! I am drooling...

    Cheers,

    Rosa

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  7. I love going out for Chinese food strictly because I love having the leftovers for breakfast. Everything looks delicious!

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  8. @GG, it's always hard to know what to order when you can't read the menu! I find that the English translations (if there are any) are often not correct anyway so even then it's hard to order.

    @Lorraine, I totally agree, in fact, I've been to yum cha so many times since I started this blog and I don't think I've written about any.

    @Dazork, serious? That must've been pretty oily! It was already drenched that night. :S

    @Rosa, It was indeed delicious. :)

    @Deanna, me too! Although I'm not sure I'd have what we had that night for breakfast, since it's all pretty oily. Dumplings are good for breakfast :D

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  9. Ooo! A visitor to my hood! lol... I haven't been there in ages.. must go back!

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  10. @msihua, thanks to your post I knew what the dishes were called in English. :P I forgot to take a photo of the menu and only had them written in Chinese! Carnegie's full of great restaurants, need to eat there more. :)

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