wiredfool

From the recommendation of Mr Whybark, we’ve now tried out Sezchuan Bean Flower twice, and I’m seriously depressed that we found this after moving off the mainland.

There is just no good ethnic food on South Whidbey, and very little good vegetarian food either. After living near Fremont (land of 1000 thai resturants) and India Bistro, and well, anything good and spicy, the two chinese options over here are lacking.

China City (Freeland) got my attention with beautiful decor — statues, koi, dark wood, and such. The attention was from my observation of the general inverse relationship between decor and food quality. Pretty bland food, nothing that I don’t feel that I could make, and not especially special ingredients.

Hong Kong Garden (Clinton) had similar but better food and an incredible view. Their decor is much more along the lines of what I expect from a decent chinese resturant, but there wasn’t a whole lot of depth to the dishes we ordered.

Sezchuan Bean Flower, on the other hand, is worth taking the ferry and driving down to Oak Tree for the food. (Rose used to live mere blocks from here. Did we notice it? No.)

Sauteed string beans were excellent, spicy and garlicky. Eggplant in the two forms that we’ve had it were both good. I believe that we’ve had Eggplant with tofu and Eggplant with garlic, but I’m not certain on that. The Hot and Sour soup was quite nice, it even seemed to have a bit of the white pepper flavor that you don’t see around often.

The kicker is that lunch is downright cheap, and dinner wasn’t much more. The three of us (2 adults + the boy) had three lunches with entree, rice and soup for less than $15. The only drawback for us is that we had a little miscommunication as to the vegetarianness of a dish the first time we were there. The server was very helpful about replacing it, we were just a little more careful the second time.