Bazu, Adelaide by Big Fil

With Star House full and Ky Chow closed Boxing Day lunch options were a little thinner than expected. Our initial impressions of Bazu were a bit dubious. While from the outside it looked nice enough and was fairly busy, it is a Sichuan restaurant and it seemed strange that they were offering yum cha. However with three hungry youngsters plus parents in tow on a hot summer's day beggars couldn't be choosers.



Bazu offers most of the usual dim sum suspects including fried prawn wantons, fried pork dumplings, steamed prawn dumplings, chickens feet plus a few 'special dishes' such as the Chinese broccoli in oyster sauce and salt and pepper squid. In a possible nod to its Sichuan roots it also offered a cold, spicy tripe dish as well as a more south-east Asian durian pastry.

So what were they like? To be honest, mediocre. For example, the steamed pork buns were about 90% bun and 10% pork. The skin on the steamed prawn rice noodles was overly thick as was that on the steamed prawn dumplings. Both were a bit light on for prawn filling.







The chicken's feet were passable, as was the salt and pepper squid and the broccoli. For me the major issue was that these dishes were a little light on for flavour - for example you'd hope that the squid would have a delicate flavour underneath its batter but I found it a bit tasteless.







To me the best of the dishes didn't necessarily fit that well into the yum cha mould, the cold tripe. Tripe to me is more a textural than a flavour dish but the spicy sauce which it was served with gave it quite a punch. It didn't really match the softer flavours of the other dishes that well, but would make a good complement to a spicy Sichuan feast.



Unfortunately the dessert choices were the worst of the meal. While the durian pastry came with durian's unique taste and smell the pastry was dry. The egg tarts were amongst the worst I've had. It was almost as if they had been insufficiently cooked, with the filling tasteless and a bit runny and the pastry tasteless. And while I didn't sample the mango pudding reports from the others were that it had almost no mango flavour at all.



Overall
I don't really like giving bad news when staff seemed to be trying hard but it was one of those cases where you could judge a book by its cover. Service was fine and it was a fairly nice place to eat, but the quality of the food wasn't what we had hoped for. Also, it could have been because it was a public holiday but it was more expensive than I'd anticipated. I'd give Bazu another try for some spicy Sichuan treats but wouldn't return for yum cha.

Verdict
Food - 6
Ambience - 7
Service - 7
Price - 6

Address
39 Gouger Street
Adelaide SA 5000
Tel: (08) 8231 8006