Hello tiger

>>Tapioca Thé’s fiery Szechwan cuisine
will get you hot under the collar

by A.J. KINIK

In the heart of the Concordia ghetto, underneath a quirky little Asian fashion boutique that appears to be called Elfland, and behind a sign that reads Le Wok Dorée, sits an unassuming establishment called Tapioca Thé. No mystery here, right? Just another one in the ever-expanding number of bubble tea joints that have spilled across the city in recent years.

Well, it’s certainly got the proper look; a bright pink interior, a magazine rack that’s covered with fashion, celebrity and teen magazines, and the requisite bubble tea bar. But don’t let the twee décor fool you: Tapioca Thé may look like a kitten—in fact, it may look kind of Hello Kitty—but a tiger lurks within.

You see, like pretty much every other bubble tea establishment in town, Tapioca Thé offered snacks and light meals to go along with their impressive selection of hot and cold teas, but unlike any other bubble tea establishment in town that I know of, the owner of Tapioca Thé decided to raise the stakes, bringing in a certified Szechwanese chef to man the kitchen. Not only have they successfully raised the stakes, they’re raising the roof with their fiery Szechwan cuisine.

So on a brutally cold February night, a gang of five of us descended on Tapioca Thé to see if we could put all that spice to good use.

In desperate need of something to get rid of the chill, we started with an order of hot chili wontons ($5.99) and what we received was a bowl of 10 delicate pork wontons in an explosive broth that was swimming with (you guessed it!) hot chilies and laced with chili oil. Just what the doctor ordered.

Tapioca Thé’s got a number of exotic-sounding dishes in their repertoire (Braised Swamp Eel Chunk with Szechwan Sauce, anyone?), but our guides/Szechwan cuisine experts steered us towards the classics.

As the name suggests, Twice-Cooked Pork ($9.99) features pork that’s been braised then stir-fried, and it came with green peppers, bok choy and onions and was the mildest of the trio.

Next on the ascending ladder of spice was the Cumin Beef ($11.99), which combined toasted cumin with the mind-altering qualities of Szechwan peppercorns. And at the top of the ladder was the Imperial Chicken, aka Gong Bao Chicken, aka Kung Pao Chicken ($8.99), where the diced chicken came tossed with green onions, peanuts, a liberal quantity of hot chilies and an equally generous amount of Szechwan peppercorns, dressed in a light hot and sour sauce.

All three were fantastic, but the Imperial Chicken was where you really got to feel the magic of Szechwan cuisine in action: the chilies setting your mouth ablaze, the Szechwan peppercorns literally numbing your mouth just enough so that you can actually taste the dish’s complex flavours.

We rounded out the meal with two dishes from the “vegetarian” section of the menu. I had reservations about Chinese Nappy with Hot and Sour Sauce ($5.99) when I first saw it listed, but when I figured out that the “nappy” in question was in fact Napa cabbage, we went ahead and ordered it. We also got the Stir-Fried Green Beans ($7.99).

Both were delicious, especially the green beans, but then that’s partially because they were stir-fried with ground pork, so vegetarians beware—you might want to ask pointed questions about the “vegetarian” dishes before you order.

We stepped back out into those howling February winds ecstatic, our mouths literally tingling from the sensory overload. The next day, Tapioca Thé was pretty much all I could think about, and the day after that too. So I started going back and working through the menu and I can highly recommend two more incendiary numbers, Water-Boiled Beef ($11.99), a stew big enough for four that comes with thinly sliced beef and lots of bok choy, and Ma Po Tofu ($8.99), which mixes highly flavourful soft tofu with ground pork and copious amounts of ground chilies.

After one of these repeat visits, the owner came up to us and nervously asked, “Did you like it? It wasn’t too hot?” “Are you kidding? We loved it! Don’t change a thing!” we told her. To which she replied, “Are you from China?”