It turned out to be a great choice. We were the only non-asians in sight while we were there and we noticed that although they don't do take away, there were a fair few tables (probably regulars) ordering far more dishes than they could possibly eat and taking away numerous "doggy bags" of nearly or completely untouched dishes.
We started with a lovely hot-sour soup and progressed to the Long beans (snake beans cut into manageable size) stir-fried with pork mince (and of course chilli), the Deep fried chicken cubes with very hot and spicy dried chilli (also deep fried) and the Hot Pot Beef with Hot & Spicy Sauce.
The beans with the finely ground pork, garlic, chilli and other spices would make anyone want to eat their greens, nicely spicy but not too hot and a nice balance to the hotter dishes.
The following is a picture of the remnants of the Chicken dish after we ate all the chicken and about a dozen of the chillis each:
Somewhere in the middle of this I heard a mumble along the lines of "this is better than sex", but I was too busy inhaling the fragrance from the Beef Hot Pot to be insulted at the time. We couldn't finish the Hot Pot, the serves are large and we had to leave some of the spicy rich broth and much of the chinese cabbage and other greens lurking under the generous serve of tender spicy beef.
As you may be able to see from the fuzzy picture (phone camera), we consumed a bottle of 2000 Redbank Sally's Paddock, the pure intense fruit of this cabernet blend shone through the chilli and spices right to the end, just a delightful, immaculately balanced wine with great complexity, just like the food.
Total cost for two, including steamed rice, Jasmine tea and corkage (a miserly $2/per person) was just under $65, a pittance for this exciting food.
On Saturday, after a bit over 5 hours of demonstration, lecture, practical and eating what we cooked (Sour orange Curry of prawns, mud crab simmered in coconut cream, black fried squid, deep fried barramundi with tumeric and garlic) we had a brief rest, a long walk, another rest and then wandered Chinatown considering alternatives for a late light dinner.
BBQ King and Golden Century were considered and rejected, the touts on Dixon St have been learning from the Italians in Lygon st Melbourne and so we ended up back at Red Chilli to sample more of their brilliant spicy food, the standout this time being the Sauteed Shredded Beef, a dish much more complex and interesting than the name might imply, they really do need a copy-writer to add some descriptions to their menu. There were a few more tables of non-chinese this time, I'm surprised there weren't more, this is seriously good chinese food and most of the dishes aren't as chilli-hot as the ones we had.
I think I'll change my tag to be the Red (Chilli) Bigot.
Also, for those of you struggling with those post-seasonal extra kilos, there was a "solid" chap at the cooking class wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with "Life's too short to be Thin!".
