"Green parrot with a red mouth."
(This post is based largely on visits to the Midtown location, which is closed.) Cold spinach with chili oil also answers to a poetic name, as do all the "prodigal daughter's dishes of Chinese emperor" (others include "the blueberry trees bend their green branches" and "we would be two love-birds flying wing to wing on high"). That's just one page of a expansive, somewhat cryptically categorized menu that's worth exploring for Cantonese, Shanghainese and especially Hunanese as well as Sichuanese fare.
Some favorites include the soup dumplings (one is shown below), braised beef fillets with chili sauce (which can be fiercely spicy), smoked tea duck, Shanghai-style red cooking fish filet (below), sauteed Shanghai bok choy, stir-fried sea eel, and from the "Mao's home cooking" section of the menu, cured pork with garlic shoots (at bottom). Should you have leftovers, the fatty pork and garlic in this Hunan standard makes for an especially nice breakfast.
Grand Sichuan International
229 Ninth Ave. (at 24th St.)
(one of several loosely related Grand Sichuan restaurants)
212-352-0590
