Dinner at Lao Sze Chuan - - Again and Again

Last night was our outing to our favorite restaurant, Lao Sze Chuan, so of course I have to blog about it.

Liane proposed a brilliant idea: “Why don’t we order entrées we’ve never had before?”

Seeing that Lao Sze Chuan has the largest menu of any restaurant, ever, we thought that was a fantastic idea. (There’s even an entire new menu section that features frog dishes of every kind, such as “Boiled Frog in Spicy Szechuan Sauce.)

However, crab Rangoon for Miss Healthypants and pot-stickers for Liane are always a mainstay, so there’s that.

We couldn’t do without peapods in garlic. They are just too utterly fantastic and besides, we don’t consider it to be an entrée.

Isn’t it pretty? See why we have to have it every time?

We all agreed that the “Nine Story Pagoda Chicken with Basil Leaves” sounded too intriguing to pass up. (It’s in the upper left)
I don’t quite know what about it resembles a nine-story pagoda. Whatever it was, we liked it and will probably order it again sometime.

We also had spicy noodles with ground pork. It came in a lot of VERY spicy sauce. I ate most of it. We also ordered this fish-and-tofu dish. The fish was great. The tofu, not so much. This was a lot of food for three people. We managed to eat just about all of everything.

Oink. . .

Oink. . .

Of course, afterward I herded us down to the new smoothie place that features smoothies made from the infamous durian fruit.

Here’s a pic of a durian fruit cut in half.

It definitely looks like something from Alien

The moment we walked into the smoothie place, I could smell the musky scent of durian in the air. I ordered a durian-coconut smoothie for us all to try.

Liane and I both agreed that durian is very reminiscent of rotten onions. I don’t even want to think of what eating pure durian must be like. Eating durian that’s alloyed with coconut and smoothie’d is bad enough.
So, there was our evening. It was fantastic.

If any of you are ever in Chicago. . . .