THENEWYORKER,M AY16, 2022 15
PHOTOGRAPH BY WILLIAM MEBANE FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE
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TABLESFORTWO
So Do Fun
155 Third Ave.
The idea of authenticity in food is tempt-
ing but slippery. Take, for example, So
Do Fun, a new restaurant in Gramercy.
If you had to categorize it bluntly, you
might call it Sichuan—but it’s the first
U.S. outpost of a chain founded in 2007
in Guangzhou, the Chinese city histori-
cally romanized as Canton, which means
that it’s Sichuan for a Cantonese clien-
tele. Does this origin story make it less
authentic—or, indeed, more authentic,
reflecting the organically idiosyncratic
way that a specific group of people eat?
Regardless, to experience that idio-
syncrasy is pure pleasure: a sort of push
and pull through peppercorn punch and
mellow sweetness, across the menu’s
dishes and sometimes within them, too.
Sichuan-style boiled fish in chili sauce—a
house specialty, advertised on custom
takeout containers—is properly, im-
mutably fiery, a glorious morass of dried
chilies, Sichuan peppercorns, scallions,
cilantro, sesame seeds, and shiny knobs
of unpeeled garlic almost completely
obscuring the fish, served whole or in
supple fillets, dusted with cornstarch so
that it holds a sculptural, rippled shape.
“You can’t just top-skim—you have to
dredge,” one of my dining companions
noted, as he trawled the bottom of a
forged-steel skillet with a spoon, un-
earthing a few bonus morsels of fillet.
A page of Must Haves lists mapo
tofu, spicy crawfish, double-cooked
pork, and Sichuan-style fried chicken,
all of which bear substantial heat. It
also includes more understated options,
worthy both as dramatic foils and in
their own right. Slender slabs of pork
belly are battered in coarse, crispy rice
meal before they’re steamed in bamboo
atop chunks of taro, the slightly sug-
ared coating going pleasantly soft, the
fat rendered nearly gelatinous. Frilly
leaves of Napa cabbage are bathed in a
warm chicken consommé, topped with
buoyantly crunchy shrimp and segments
of preserved egg, almost black and as
translucent as stained glass.
Must you have the bullfrog? If you’re
chasing authenticity, you’d better—it’s
a popular protein in Sichuan Province.
Moreover, the dish is delicious. I’ll admit
that I balked at the word, but not for a
second at the platter delivered to the table,
a beautiful mosaic of chopped fresh green
chilies (easy to eat around, unless you’re
a true spice hound) punctuated with
pearlescent pieces of tender meat that
release easily from small bones. As mild
as lobster, bullfrog is a wonderful canvas
for the mala hum of an oil infused with
green Sichuan peppercorns, a more cit-
rusy cousin of the standard red variety.
After I’d ordered the boiled fish, a
server steered me away from the boiled
beef in chili sauce; too similar, he ex-
plained, and suggested the sliced beef
with pickles and tomato soup. Its delicate,
fruity broth turned out to be on just the
right side of cloying, balanced by cubes of
silken tofu and the beef, sliced into ruffles
so thin that they must have cooked in
seconds. If the comfort of the chili sauce
took the form of catharsis—heart-rac-
ing heat and its attendant sweat—the
comfort of the tomato soup was sop-
orific, more soothing than Campbell’s.
A rousingly refreshing bowl of skinned,
chilled cherry tomatoes, meanwhile, with
a single dried sour plum that rehydrated
in their juice, displayed the versatility of
the same flavor profile.
The tomatoes, on the Cold Dish sec-
tion of the menu, along with noodles and
boiled chicken, both slicked in chili oil,
could as easily be enjoyed at the end of
the meal as at the beginning. The same
is true, perhaps more surprisingly, of the
brown-sugar rice cake, listed as a snack.
Neat rectangles of deep-fried sticky-rice
paste tossed in toasted soy flour, sweet-
ened only by a chaste dusting of brown
sugar, are served with a side of viscous
molasses for dipping. “Some people get
them as an appetizer, some as a dessert,” a
server told me. Some people eat bullfrog,
some do not. Some people want their beef
to light their tongues on fire, some want
it in tomato soup. At So Do Fun, where
you can choose your own adventure, au-
thenticity is in the eye of the beholder.
(Dishes $8.95-$36.95.)
—Hannah Goldfield
