Szechuan Gourmet

Photograph: Jolie Ruben

When I’m toiling in my midtown office, my eyes glazing like a dead fish’s, few thoughts perk me up like lunch. I dash not to a street-meat cart but to midtown’s newest outpost of Szechuan Gourmet (242 W 56th St between Broadway and Eighth Ave, 212-265-2226). The Garment District original has garnered a grade-A rep, thanks to mercilessly hot chili peppers and numbing Szechuan peppercorns—an incendiary, anesthetizing combo rarely found outside Flushing. My first Gourmet go-to was mapo tofu, bean curd bobbing in an angry lake of chili oil and minced pork. But the new Szechuan (a calmer, glitzier place) demands a fresh favorite: the braised crispy tofu with chili and sliced pork ($7.45). “Extra spicy,” I beg the waiter, who complies, delivering a dish as red as the devil. A quick dunk in the capsaicin-crammed oil gives the fried bean curd a pliant crunch, while the pork shards, strewn with melted leeks, are moist and fatty. What unifies the dish: a pyrotechnic blend of ginger and chilis, with Szechuan peppercorns turning their novocaine-like tricks. I leave, my mouth and stomach vibrantly alive—armaments against the fluorescent-lit afternoon to come.

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