A note on the words: mala is the Sichuan pairing of ma, the numbing tingle of Sichuan pepper, and la, chili heat. Kikurage is the wood ear mushroom. Takadanobaba is a student district in northwest Tokyo. Prices are as they stood at the time of the visit, and this shop has since closed.
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Shunwi Rakuzan on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Hello, this is Hangover Meshi. Well now! To think the place would close before I could even write the article after visiting!! It was a rather good shop, too lol
So: we wanted to go and eat something spicy, and I heard there was a place right by Takadanobaba Station called Shunwi Rakuzan that specialized in skewers served in a cold Sichuan hotpot, so off I went. It is on the seventh floor of a mixed-tenant building, and it seems a different Chinese restaurant has now taken over the space as it stood? Perhaps I shall go and try that one sometime.
I had Sichuan skewers before at Yuuki Shokufu in Ikebukuro, but this is a shop that does nothing else.
There are all sorts of things on the menu. Ordering is basically done on the web through a QR code.
The skewer system is a little difficult though lol The place has already closed so there is not much point writing out the details lol
First you pick a soup, then you help yourself from the fridge to whatever skewers you want in it and hand them over. They count them up and put them on your bill. Wait a while and they hand it back to you with the skewers sitting in the soup you chose ^^
Right, ordering somehow done and a weight off my mind. Beer first.
The chili powder you top the pot with is registered under the amusing name “house-made dry dip” ^^
So you dip the skewers in this — a nicely self-explanatory name.
While waiting for the skewers I added a few a la carte dishes here and there.
Sweet and spicy! But actually not that hot.
This one is perfect with beer as well!
After a while, the pot arrives!
The feeling is that they blanch everything and then steep it in a cold mala sauce to serve. It is a style where you pick a rough handful of skewers and have them thrown in, but adding more later looks basically difficult lol I did not try it, but if you added some, would they have to build this soup all over again, I wonder. This one is the hong you xiang la soup base.
The other one is the Sichuan-style mala base? I think? A soup with plenty of Sichuan pepper in it.
Neither felt all that hot. In terms of good mala, one is a red soup with the la (heat) forward and the other a Sichuan pepper soup with the ma (tingle) forward. Both go extremely well. I was not really keeping track of which skewer was which, but I have the impression the kikurage wood ear mushrooms were wonderful. This is the sort of thing where if you do not grab a decent pile at the start you end up hungry later ^^
There are potatoes laid underneath ^^ Not spicy at all.
Garlic-flavored fried spare ribs. Superb with a drink!
Chicken with a firm hit of Sichuan pepper! The image is of yodare-dori with the pepper turned way up. The chili scattered over it is hot ^^
French fries tossed in a mala-flavored sauce.
Something like a fritto ^^
What a name lol
A piping-hot clay-pot dish. In the middle sits a large piece of meat like a hamburg steak. Is this the atomic bomb, I wonder ^^
Properly delicious in a mala way, and generous with it. Hot and good!
This one I can no longer read lol Piping hot and bubbling.
The seasoning is mala, much the same as the atomic bomb. Plenty of meat with an offal quality to it.
So: a rather good shop, and a shame that it has closed. There was a lot of good food, and the prices were cheap too, so it is a pity! The place was quite handsome as well, and perhaps it was so hardcore that not many customers came. Well, either way I am really glad I got to eat this before it shut! If they open somewhere new I would love to go.
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
