A celebrated restaurant in its hometown of (no prizes for guessing) Chengdu, this Hong Kong outpost has lived up to the hype. The dining room is typical of many establishments in California Tower with a clinical contemporary look of glass and steel, offset by homely motifs from Sichuan like hibiscus flowers and bamboo weaving.
In the kitchen, executive chef Wayne Cheung applies 20 years of experience garnered in Japan, France and Italy to a menu that melds Sichuan and Cantonese cooking (as does the original in Chengdu). This approach works particularly well with the kind of seafood ingredients hardly native to the mountains of Sichuan – think chilled abalone with hua diao wine and roasted pepper sauce, or golden crispy mandarin fish finished with Sichuan chilli oil. Other dishes, like the steamed yellow croaker with fermented yellow chilli, follow a similar approach of bringing heat to premium seafood without overwhelming its natural flavour.

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