On a busy stretch of James Street, this has been a fixture since 2014, open well before mala fever swept through Perth and still holding its ground once it did. The cooking is properly Sichuan: bold, layered and built as much on aroma and the tingle of peppercorn as on raw heat. The headline plate is a mound of chicken deep-fried and buried under a heap of dried red chillies, the Chongqing way, meant to be picked through for the crisp, fragrant morsels within. Against it sits the great Sichuan water-boiled fish, thin slices poached in a scarlet broth of peppercorn, chilli and aromatics that numbs and warms in the same mouthful. There is cold chicken slippery with chilli oil, seafood done several ways, and a run of dumplings and smaller dishes for the table. The room is unpretentious and geared to sharing, the sort of Northbridge dining room that fills with groups working through a spread. For a city that came late to this style of cooking, the kitchen reads as one of the early and enduring benchmarks, the reference point locals still name when the conversation turns to where the real Sichuan heat lives.