​Sichuan has taken the city by storm, or maybe I mean by hot peppercorn. While Manhattan is generally deficient in the regional cooking of China, it has long enjoyed a pair of excellent chains that purvey Sichuan on the self-important island, including Grand Sichuan and Wu Liang Ye, both with multiple locations.

The flagship of the Wu Liang Ye chain has been located near Times Square for nearly a decade, occupying the parlor floor of a real townhouse, chandeliers intact, which means you can enjoy your Sichuan food in a setting far more elegant than most Chinese restaurants. Fork in the Road went for a revisit to see if the food was still up to snuff, but Sarah DiGregorio and I also had an ulterior motive: a summit meeting, like two mafia families, with the staff of the blog Midtown Lunch. That staff was represented by its founder, Zach Brooks, and the newest member, his son Harry.

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Wu Liang Ye's dan dan noodles are still a perfect starter to a Sichuan meal

To appraise the restaurant, we went for the standard Sichuan dishes, starting with dan-dan noodles--the quintessential street food of the province--and wontons in hot oil. Of course, the noodles had to be mixed vigorously before eating, but were extremely tasty. The heat came more from the chile oil and crushed chiles than from Sichuan peppercorns, which established a pattern repeated throughout the meal. The reason, perhaps, is the location of the restaurant in a tourist zone. Maybe many customers arrive expecting to be served a spicy meal, but unfamiliar with the peculiar neuro-culinary effects of the peppercorns, which might scare the fuck out them. These effects, of course, include numb lips and tingling tongue, like the aftermath of a visit to the dentist..