Má Là Taste of Sichuan (Westminster, London, UK)

Má Là Taste of Sichuan

(Editorial aside: I got a bit out of order; I’ll resume Wokingham reviews in a few days)

Before I had to head out to Wokingham for my work trip, I went out with Dan and Sophie for dinner. We wanted a place with some interesting cuisine that was still a short walk from Pimlico, and Dan had just the place picked out Chinese food at Má Là Taste of Sichuan.

Má Là Taste of Sichuan Interior

Located in Westminster’s SW1P postcode at the corner of Great Peter and Monck Street, Má Là (the name is a call-out to one of the fundamental tastes of Sichuan cuisine, Má Là, otherwise known as Sichuan Peppercorn) is one of the more formal Chinese restaurants in this part of London: not a lot of takeaway, focusing on dine-in service with a fairly nice decor. This is primarily due to location: the sport is placed so it gets more than a little traffic from the local business and parliament crowd, as well as some of the higher-end hotels nearby.

Sesame Chao Shou Dumplings

Since there were three of us dining, that allowed us to do my favored approach for most non-soup Asian dinners: ordering serveral appetizers and main courses for the table, with everyone able to get a reasonable cross section of different dishes. Starting out, we had an order of their Sesame Chao Shou Dumplings: Chicken dumplings in a lightly-spiced sesame sauce. These had a nice chicken filling with a good slightly-sweet and slightly-sour flavoring, a nice thin wrapper properly steamed, and a light soy and sesame sauce. This was an enjoyable start to the meal, with nice tender pockets of flavorful and moist chicken in each bite.

Dry-Fried Green Beans

Next up, a classic Sichuan side dish: dry-fried green beans. Nicely fresh and well-prepped green beans cooked up in Sichuan peppercorns, garlic, ginger, and soy sauce, this is the perfect combination of crunchy grean beens, still firm with a lot of clorophyll flavor, but rounded out with the bold flavors of the peppercorns (with a lot of tingle), garlic, and ginger notes. This was a nice complement to the rest of the meal’s flavors.

Fried Morning Glory

Next up was a common-in-much-of-the-world dish that I wanted to order just because you don’t often encounter much in the US. The plant known in the UK as “Morning Glory” isn’t the flowery plant you are thinking. In Chinese it is known as “Ong Choy” or “Kong Xin Cai”, and in English is sometimes called “Water Spinach”, and it’s known for it’s hollow stem, spinach-like flavor, and somewhat firmer-than-spinach texture. It’s also a horribly invasive plant in much of the world, and requires a special permit to move across US State Lines, and is thus is very difficult to find in the US, and uncommon on menus there. It makes a good stir fry, however: it’s basically a slightly thinner and more delicate vegetable similar to bok choy, and the hollow stems and folds of the vegetable hold sauce nicely. I’d definitely get this again.

Ma Po Tofu

For our first main course, we had Má Là’s “Legendary” Ma Po Tofu. This was a very nicely done version of the classic silken tofu dish with spicy chili bean paste, ginger, and garlic, and the texture of the tofu and level of spice were both spot on.

“Fish Fragrant” Chicken Slivers

Next up was “Fish Fragrant” Chicken Slivers: Carefully slivered chicken served in a a blend of pickled red chillies, garlic, ginger, cloud ears and Sichuan chilli bean paste, this was a really good dish. There’s no fish in this, the name is because this spice combination is often used with fish, and that particular flavor, “Fish-fragrant”, yuxiang, is one of the 23 fundamental flavors used in Sichuan cooking. This was a surprise dish to me, I really enjoyed it, and I need to figure out how to replicate it at home.

So, I really enjoyed Má Là, the dishes were flavorful and spicy, the ambiance pleasant and enjoyable, and, by London standards, the prices reasonable. And the Yuxiang Chicken was a new dish to me, one that I enjoyed well enough to try to seek it out in the future.