Man Yuan Restaurant

After landing late in Auckland I only had enough energy to schlep a block away from the hotel in search of something spicy. The menu stuck in the window at Man Yaun promised ‘spicy sichuan beef’ and I thought to myself, «I am down with that. Plus it’s cheap. Cheap sichuan! Where do I sign up?»
It’s a weird interior though, not much f***s are given making it look nice or, idk, appealing to customers. The vibe inside is sad in a forgotten and unloved kind of way, like a puppy abandoned beneath an overpass that nobody drives over these days and now he’s a bit older and isn’t so cute anymore.
And the sichuan beef. Well, the first part was a lie because there weren’t no sichuan pepper in here, son. And the beef, well, there were about three pieces in there, and the rest was filled with a whoooooole lotta cabbage, like a 1:9 ratio. It was spicy, sure, but it was some dried chilli and what tasted like bottled chilli sauce, and by then my enthusiasm for the dish was gone and I trudged home to bed, where I couldn’t sleep. Muh.