Ba Guo Bu Yi

Attended: Michael, Lisa, Dougie, Mele and Sam

Mele

I can no longer objectively review Chinese food.
I ate one bite of the weird dish-the noodle thing.

Tastes even saltier than it looks.

I had a few bites of the house special fish in chilli, until a cut in my lip put an end to it.
The pork dish tasted too piggy.
Even the chicken tasted too much like chicken.
I ate quite a lot of the chocolate tartufo, an item I last saw on the menu of an Italian wedding in the 1980s . It tasted good because it wasn’t Chinese.

No doubt made by an ethnically stereotypical chef.

I am suffering what our friend Michael has termed ‘The Supersize Me’ effect.
I now have a psychological ‘revulsion’ response to Chinese food. After the jellyfish with raw chicken, congee with kidneys and liver, vegemite noodles and countless other weird dishes, I cannot face any further inedible parts of animals, which included Ba Guo Bu Yi's DUCK TONGUE dish and the broiled pig’s ears.
Come on, people, I was a vegetarian for eight years.

The worst sign of my malaise is the fact that I am actually relieved we are eating at the Talbot Hotel next week. No food reviewer in their right mind would think such a thing. The ‘Animal Graveyard’ culinary tour of Gouger Street needs to end for me.

I think I will be choosing weird vegetarian things from now on.

Sam

We expected bits of animals fried in flavoured sauces.
We did not expect a revelation.
We arrived early at Ba Guo Bu Yi and set about examining the menu of Sechuan Chinese dishes.

And some not so traditional ones.

One thing became abundantly clear: we both dread going to these restaurants.
Not the charming ennui-laden dread of the fabulously well-heeled: "Oh I'm just dreading another weekend in St Moritz. Yacht parties are so boring."

Instead, we are possessed of the very real and creeping dread you had when you were a kid getting an injection. The needle. The adults holding you down. You gotta get stuck. You gotta.
WE DON'T WANNA.
Each restaurant visit has been tainted by the knowledge that at some point, we're going to have to eat something that we'll probably find repulsive.

Maybe this was on the menu, maybe not. We don't even know any more.

We've had enough. We started this Epic Adventure to discover new dishes, new places and to open up the entirety of Gouger beyond the same two restaurants we always go to. Part of that means trying new things, things we wouldn't normally order. This, as you have seen, has devolved fairly briskly into an extended game of Truth or Dare.

So we're declaring an end to disgusting. Scoff if you must, but we have dined upon dread and found it not to our tastes. The '"weirdest thing on the menu" rule was invented to force us to order something we wouldn't normally try. Okay - fine - I'll be honest: it was basically a ploy to get me to stop ordering pork every single time.
That has worked.

But replacing it with something I'm going to try, dislike and pay for isn't really a very helpful or useful food review. Hilarious, I'll admit, but we're bored with it. We've done 'yuck'. We're bored with 'gross'. We are through with the 'every part of the animal' philosophy of urban dining. We ain't starving in the Yukon no more. We don't have to eat things that people only started eating in the first place because food was a privilege and flavour secondary.

Goodbye, jellyfish.
Goodbye, offal.
Goodbye, anything clipped off an animal and cooked in flavour sauce.
Helloooo new horizons.

And now to my review:

An utterly impressive restaurant. This is the reason we started this journey in the first place: to discover new things.

Deep Fried Pork Ribs with Salt and Sugar

Delicious! Tender, yet deep-fried and the salt/sugar combination is really the end of war and the beginning of peace on earth and love between all beings (except for pigs).

Chilli Fish Soup

We ordered this oily soup "mild" so that Mele could actually eat it. The bowl arrived teeming with fresh chopped chillis. The "mild" part happens when the waitress gets a slotted spoon and removes about half of the chillis. They really do cater for all pallets.

So, my friends, onlookers and double-darers. Go to Ba Guo Bu Yi. But don't order anything you really don't want, because you will end up sad and ridiculed for not eating badger's noses and jaguar's ear lobes or whatever it is they're serving.

Next stop: The Talbot Hotel