Even more food from Tian Fu Ren Jia (天府人家)

I've decided to compile this from a few visits. If anyone was wondering, I am not affiliated with the establishment nor do I have any stakes in them. 

辣子鸡

La zi ji is a dish of Szechuan origins. It's basically deep fried chicken stir fried with dried chilli and some other stuff. Chicken was nicely fried without being excessively greasy. The heat from the dried chilli slowly built up but I have the impression that it is localized for a palate that might not be used to a great deal of spiciness. YMMV. In any case, this was quite tasty.

酸耳芥蓝子

Pretty decent stir fried kailan they do here.

麻婆豆腐饭

That's mapo tofu rice. The mapo sauce had a distinct flavour of fermented beans - which was a good thing. The heat was moderate and I liked the aroma. It's a however a totally different thing from Chen's which was a little spicier and had a much stronger hit from the Szechuan peppercorns. Still, this was leagues better than the local variety which is honestly not very good in my view.

黑椒鸡肉炒饭

That's black pepper beef fried rice. I had the idea that it was beef with a sweetish black pepper sauce but it was really just black pepper in a fried rice with minced beef. It wasn't bad - in fact, it was a better fry than what the majority of the cze char stalls can muster these days. I thought it needed a little more salt or fish sauce. Not much flavour coming from the beef too. 

咕老肉饭

One of the dishes these guys do differently from what we're used to here is sweet and sour pork. The pork comes in slices rather than chunks. The slices are also pretty thin so the texture of the meat is mostly crisp from the batter with a bit of chew. I can't say that these were not nice.

尖椒肉丝

We ordered this a couple of times. This first time had the bottom of the plate pooling with the sauce and oil. The second time didn't have any of that at all. In any case, this was stir fried strips of green chilli and pork. Very tasty. The chillis were wilted enough to be tender and without the rawness. Again, it's a dish where the heat builds up. But nothing to tear over.

酸菜肥肠饭

This was described as sour veg pig gut rice on the menu. Which of course refers to pickled/salted lettuce and pig intestines. The use of pig gut as a description of the intestines in Chinese restaurants always amuses me. Yum.  

糖醋鱼饭

Pretty decent sweet and sour fish rice here. The portions of the fish appear to be much more generous than those from our local stalls. There're also less aromatics/vegetable fillers.


And yet even more....updated 1/8/2017

花卷/锅贴

That's a hua juan on the left, a steamed bun that's normally twisted in appearance. The Chinese variety comes with scallions while the local variety usually doesn't. It was a little hard for a steamed bun and less sweet than I thought. Those guo tie are fine but don't expect them to be in the leagues of Jin Hua.

木耳炒肉饭

This was stir fried pork and black fungus - came with pretty generous portions of black fungus. The sauce was light tasting. I'm not sure what it was but the flavour was rather generic. In retrospect, this would be something I wouldn't mind eating if I'm looking for something lightweight.

担担面

Here's the most diluted looking dan dian mian I've come across that's at 小辣. I had initially thought little of it but after a few mouthfuls, it kinda grew on me. The broth was light, savoury and had flavours from the chilli oil and a bit of peppercorn. Kinda reminded me of a thinner counterpart to their mapo tofu and I wouldn't be surprised if this was their generic "Szechuan spice" base for a bunch of their dishes. Not what I had in mind for dan dan mian but it wasn't half bad. I suppose I'm just used to those with either a thicker broth or a nuttier gravy.

豉汁鱼片饭

This was sliced fish with black bean sauce. Not exactly the black bean sauce I had in mind because it didn't look anywhere black. There wasn't much of those fermented black beans to be found and the flavours were kinda thin. In contrast with their sweet and sour fish rice, this had much less fish. Now I know I shouldn't be getting any of their dishes with black bean sauce in the future.