Review: Sichuan Garden in East Setauket

Everyone may be hopping on the Sichuan bandwagon of fiery chilies and numbing peppercorn spice, but Sichuan Garden in East Setauket is operating at a level above the pack. 

The kitchen is headed by Young Zhao, a Sichuan-born chef who previously manned Daxi Sichuan in Flushing, Queens. For his Long Island odyssey, he banded with Kevin Lin, who owns Ichi Sushi & Ramen just 500 feet to the east. (The attractive eatery was previously a short-lived Sichuan hot-pot restaurant Xiao Si Chuan.) 

Zhao's photogenic menu is geared toward a Chinese audience with spectacles like millet and sea cucumber porridge and a pork blood stew layered with mushrooms and tripe. Cautious meat eaters will also find something to love here, as the restaurant serves a superlative mapo tofu. This homestyle dish, invented in Sichuan but popular all over China, always includes cubes of tofu, fermented bean sauce, chilies and ground pork. Here, the cubes are big and fluffy, and lightly veiled in a sauce all of whose components, especially the beans, come through with sharp clarity.

While large parties might partake in whole braised fish served a-sizzle in a huge, shallow pan, even the stew fish turns out to be enough for six. The enormous bowl is filled to the brim with an opaque broth, soured with pickled vegetables and barely concealed fat shards of tender fish. The broth is liberally seasoned with Sichuan peppercorns that confer the signature Sichuan "mala," a fragrant, slightly camphor-like flavor that numbs and tingles the mouth. Bunches of green Sichuan peppercorns float in the soup, lending their own fresh note.

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