Warm up with $5.90 noodles and lip-tingling dishes at this hot Chinatown spot

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There are three ways to deal with winter if you don’t have decent heating. You can take off to San Sebastian to drink cider on a beach for three months, although this may not be viable for most of us. You could buy one of those wearable Oodie blankets, but then you’d actually have to wear one of those Oodie blankets. Or – and this is my preferred method – you can eat so much Sichuan food that your mouth feels like Dave’s final journey across time and the infinite in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Spicy Joint, we meet again.

Does Spicy Joint have the best Sichuan food in Sydney? Not quite. Lan Dining in Haymarket could mount a serious campaign for that title, plus several other restaurants featuring “red” or “chilli” in the name. Regardless, every June I look forward to inhaling Spicy Joint’s fish doused in chilli oil with the kind of enthusiasm my dad reserves for the McOz’s return.

If you haven’t taken the fourth-floor escalator to Spicy Joint in Haymarket (you can find it at the northern end of Dixon Street), you may have eaten at one of the chain’s outposts in Burwood, Chatswood or Rhodes. Perhaps you’ve even visited one of the locations in Shanghai, where the first Spicy Joint opened in 2004 and is better known as Xin Xiang Hui.

A similar menu of Sichuan favourites is available in all the restaurants, and the punchy kung pao chicken ($21.90) at Haymarket tastes like the kung pao chicken at Burwood.

When the Chinatown location opened in 2017, a queue formed immediately. Chinese expats were thrilled to have a Xin Xiang Hui in town; other Sydneysiders were drawn in by the value. A small bowl of dan dan noodles topped with a rubble of minced pork in dusky-red broth is $5.90. Six serviceable pork wontons swimming in chilli oil are $7.90. Thin-sliced beef in a “hot and sour” stock of surprising depth is $25.90.

Spicy Joint continues to be hugely popular and the din of clinking teacups and stacked plates is relentless. On a recent, Friday-night visit, my wait to be seated was half an hour, but there are chairs in the foyer that you can park on until your number is called.

Once you’re in the sprawling dining room – a dignified space with an open kitchen and ornate woodwork – things move fast. A Tsingtao lager ($6.90) arrives within two minutes of ordering through my phone on the QR code-launched menu, and those dan dan noodles don’t take much longer.

Poached, chilled and sliced chicken ($26.90) in a viscous combination of chilli oil and sesame paste is a signature and chook thigh doesn’t come much juicer. But I’ve come for that fish in a Sichuan pepper-spiked broth of potent flavour and intimidating size.

It could almost feed four people and only costs $39.90, partly because the fish is cheap, boneless hunks of an anonymous species (a spokesperson for the group later tells me the restaurant uses “blackfish”).

In any case, the white fillets are essentially just a canvas for the fresh chilli and lip-tingling Sichuan pepper berries that cling to the flesh like dried burrs on a hiking sock. It’s a dish that holds your attention.

That hot and numbing flavour (known in Sichuan cooking as “ma”) underpins many dishes, including roasted, cleavered lamb ribs with cumin and submissive cubes of potato ($35.90) and a homely, mildly funky mapo tofu ($18.90) made with minced beef rather than pork, as Chengdu tradition dictates.

White fillets are a canvas for the fresh chilli and lip-tingling Sichuan pepper berries that cling to the flesh like burrs.

Meanwhile, a pepper-laced number listed simply as “pan-fried chicken with chilli” ($29.90) has the most uncompromising uppercut of heat I’ve ever encountered at a Spicy Joint – or almost any other joint, for that matter.

Nubs of deep-fried chook covered in lustrous, blood-red dried chillies ($26.90) are less intense, but you’ll still want another Tsingtao or super-garlicky, smashed cucumber ($9.90) to temper the spice.

The long menu demands repeat visits and I’m still jonesing to try the youtiao (fried dough sticks) stuffed with minced prawns ($38.90) and beef brisket stewed with smoked bamboo ($39.90).

I can say, however, that winter sides don’t get much better than wok-tossed, soy-seasoned cabbage with crunchy bits of sizzled pork belly fat ($16.90) and fried peanuts pickled in vinegar ($8.90).

The service is brisk. The best wine is a forgettable Chain of Fire 2021 Pinot Noir ($51 a bottle), but Spicy Joint tackles the “good, fast, cheap” brief with impressive, dependable results.

Who needs three months in Spain when you’ve got three dozen dishes that will have you sweating as if you’re in a sauna?

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine