The Sichuan Warmoesstraat restaurant detour was not on today’s itinerary, but the weather had other plans. It’s my third or fourth day in Amsterdam, and I (shockingly) hadn’t had good Asian food yet (the jetlag-induced, soul-nourishing meal in hotel bed at 6pm doesn’t count).
We just came back from Lisse with Ghanaian food booked for dinner. But the minute we stepped out of Centraal, the all-too-familiar cold wind and grey sky greeted me. I told Fafa I needed a bowl of rice, served in white porcelain still warm to the touch. ASAP.
One Google and one unsuccessful reservation later (living in Melbourne taught me to book anywhere I go), we made our way to China Sichuan Warmoesstraat, a stone’s throw from Kam Yin (Surinamese-Chinese) and Aneka Rasa (Indo food), both added to the list.
The place is Fafa’s choice. I agreed because it’s Sichuan, and partly because I’ve been drooling over Liz’s Sichuan escapade in the real Chengdu and Chongqing.
The restaurant is narrow, with a “close the door when you enter” sign, five tables of patrons at 4 pm (reassuring), and a heavy menu that landed on us as soon as we sat down. A true sign of a good restaurant. Everything looked good, but I needed familiarity, having found the fried pig intestine at FuLu Mandarijn two days earlier amiss (though Fafa might disagree; I think I don’t like FuLu because it’s modern Chinese rather than Sichuan, or it’s just not as good).
So this time we ordered our usual: beef (like the toothpick beef at Dainty) buried under dried chillies and sesame, and pork with green chilli glistening in chilli oil (like the one from Chilli Up), plus, for research purposes, the pickled fried rice, a steaming mound we hadn’t tried before. Not before I reminded Fafa that this meant I still hadn’t got the bowl of rice I wished for. The one that launched us on this route to begin with.
To drink: a house wine for me, half the price of the jasmine tea, while Fafa got the Sichuan Dragon, the steam lager brewed with Sichuan peppercorns by Amsterdam’s Two Chefs Brewing for this place. Ride the dragon and prosper.
The food came a bit later, and it was absolutely delicious. It satiated the great-meal craving I had been chasing after an April filled with microwaved food, takeaway food, airport food and aeroplane food (an aside to Matilda and that keema roll we had in Doha). Is it better than what we have at Dainty and Chilli Up? Well, I am not a loyalist, but no. Still, they tweaked the beef with fried garlic pieces, which I ate and hunted to death until Fafa stood up to leave. The pork holds its own, too, though not as spicy as Chilli Up’s (our fault, we didn’t ask for it). Everything tastes more luminous. And the pickled fried rice is so good that I added it to my list of recipes to cook to entice my husband. It was too good.
All this to say: if you are missing Chinese food after a while of travelling, looking for a great meal after a few disappointing ones (side-eyeing FuLu again), or just after good food in Amsterdam, especially if you are into spicy food, look no further. Or maybe do, because apparently this place has three branches scattered nearby, which we found out when a group of eight insisted on making a booking here and stood there arguing while we ate.
Sorry, I should have taken a picture of the restaurant from the outside, but I usually worry about jinxing a place before going in (especially this one, where we walked in without a reservation), and I was too food-dazed after to remember. It has a nice red arch with the name on it, which you can find by Google-ing it.
Grey sky: defeated. Happiness 10/10. Chinese Sichuan Warmoesstraat FTW.
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Address: Chinese Sichuan Warmoesstraat 17, 1012 HT Amsterdam, Netherlands.
