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.
