* Eating Fire At Cloud Ship

My evening at Yun Chuan Garden Restaurant tasting their incredibly authentic Szechuan cuisine was very ... um ... flamalicious!  One of the items on the menu was "Spicy w/ Spicy" with three red peppers next to it - just looking at the menu was tear-jerking.  Every single dish is so tasty and so spicy, you almost feel like you are being punished for having discovered the secret garden of amazing food.

Inquiring about their name from a Chinese coworker, I learned that Yun Chuan is a combination of two characters: Yun - 雲 (Yun-Nan province - 雲南省) and Chuan - 川 (Si-Chuan province – 四川省) in southwestern China.  I also looked up phonetic translations for those two characters and that is how I came up with "cloud" and "ship" in the title.

I must say, I normally do not enjoy extremely spicy hot food when I cannot taste the food itself anymore, and every inhalation becomes a reason for tears and irritation in my throat.  However, the hotness of this Far-Eastern feast was perfectly balanced by the exquisite and wonderfully sweet conversations that circulated around the table, thanks to the brilliant group of people that shared the evening with me.  谢谢 Xièxiè* G, M, M, and S!  :)

Just one last thing:  Make sure to ask for extra napkins to wipe off sweat, you will need lots of them!

*Xièxiè :  "Thank you" in Mandarin Chinese according to Google Translator.