Szechuan Gourmet Goes for the Burn

“NOW this is just sort of cool and refreshing,” I remarked to my tablemates as I pinched some more of the sectioned cucumbers with my chopsticks and ferried them down the hatch. “It’s a nice, clean little break from the fire, and it ...”

Hold on. Wait a second. Something was starting to happen in my mouth.

First came a few flickers, then a few more. This blaze was perhaps gentler than the one sparked by the sesame noodles moments earlier, though maybe more forceful than anything the glistening orange oil beneath the pork dumplings had wrought.

It was sneakier than either, that much was certain. And it definitely wasn’t a reprieve.

At Szechuan Gourmet, a restaurant on a drab Midtown block that fans of Sichuan cooking should be visiting in greater numbers and with greater frequency than they are, the heat is almost always on, and it comes at you in different ways.

Sometimes it hits you full blast with your first bite of a dish and never lets up. Sometimes it starts small and builds, a late bloomer. And sometimes it lies in wait, biding its time before stating its case.

It’s fickle, tricky, fierce. It can light a match to your tongue, numb your lips, snap you to attention and do a job on your stomach that lasts a good long while.

“I feel like I ate a wolverine,” wrote one friend in an e-mail message after a lunch there, and what struck me wasn’t the sentiment. It was the time stamp. The message had been sent six hours after the meal was over.

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