Ollie's Sichuan

I was in the hospital for almost a week, and on Sunday night, finally felt recovered enough to go out for dinner. Although I had eaten some other "real" (aka non-hospital) food at home, this was the first meal outside the house since becoming sick. It felt nice to be a real person.

We went to Ollie's Sichuan, the closest Chinese restaurant to us which we really like because of their authentic Sichuan dishes, especially the fish.

We started out with the "rainbow chicken."


I think this was on the menu as "chicken with rainbow vegetables" but it's now an off-menu order. They still make it for us when we request it though. It was an odd dish originally, because the menu description never matched the actual dish. From the description, we expected shredded chicken in a white sauce with ham and vegetables. We have never gotten that, but instead it's a healthy shredded chicken with snow peas, jicama, mushrooms (often but not this time), carrots and bamboo shoots. It's a nice light dish so we keep ordering it even though it's not officially on the menu.

The second thing we got was eggplant.


Eggplant isn't that healthy because it soaks up so much oil, but it's tasty. This is made with garlic and scallions.

Lastly, our favorite standby at Ollie's - the fish fillets with napa cabbage in a "clay pot." That metal dish isn't really a clay pot but that's what it seems to be called on the menu.


The fish is always perfectly cooked and so flavorful. If you don't like spicy food, this probably isn't the dish for you, but you can make it a little less spicy by scraping off all the chili peppers and other red stuff. It still leaves some very tasty fish fillets. I prefer this one to the whole fish - it just has more fish and more flavor.

That's our neighborhood Chinese place - what do you like from your neighborhood Chinese place?