Last month, I was invited to a friend's home in Reading. I've known her partner since 2004 through another mutual friend, and he and I have kept more in touch than the original friend who moved further away and started a family. My friend and his girlfriend have been meaning to catch up for awhile to have a Chinese meal and to see her place in Reading, but life (work) and other events (travel, home renovations) kept getting in the way. In fact, the last time that we met up, we met up with some of her mutual friends as well and ended up walking around the cold Chiswick House Gardens to see the Magic Lantern Festival.
The meeting up was also a congratulations of sorts as my friends have announced their engagement earlier in October (or at the end of September). We used this an an excuse to pencil in a weekend to meet up in Reading to see her place and have a meal. We ended up at the Memory of Sichuan, which is an authentic Chinese restaurant with real Chinese dishes. Of course, for the squeamish western taste, they also do the standard dishes. We had discussed getting a hotpot to share ages ago, but we decided to get a mixture of dishes to share. In fact, the photograph below does not even show all of the dishes that we ordered.
I ordered a stir fry with chicken, needle mushrooms, broccoli, and potato slices. And we ordered a sweet corn dish, green bean dish, noodles, fried rice, pork, beef stir fry, a duck stir fry, and a couple of additional dishes that I cannot remember. My favourites were the sweet corn followed by the bean and my stir fry, and I loved the sauce on the duck stir fry. The food was tasty.
Hopefully it will not be several months before I see my friends again as we've been discussing for the past year about visiting a nice restaurant in London and going out for a nice hot chocolate afterwards.
Memory of Sichuan is located at 109 Friar Street in Reading (RG1 1EP). It is open from 11:30 until 22:30 Sunday to Thursday and 11:30 to 23:00 on Friday and Saturday.
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