24 Romilly Street, London W1 (020 7287 3266). Meal for two, including wine and service, £60
Curiously, there are a few misguided people with malformed tongues and warped opinions who argue with my reviews, and never more so than with my positive words for Golden Day, on London's Shaftesbury Avenue, which serves the chilli-packed food of China's Hunan province. To have enjoyed eating there, my correspondents said, I must have been deranged, drunk, delirious or all three. I was none of these things; I've been taking it easy recently. But enjoy it very much I did. Hunanese food is the fieriest of all the Chinese traditions: less oily than Szechuan and much more pungent. This cuisine does wonderful things with smoked and pickled vegetables, with sauces the colour of mahogany furniture and meats long braised into submission. Don't like the sound of that? Then go elsewhere, because I'm going to give it up big time for another Hunanese place.
Bashan, in Soho, is owned by the people who run the upmarket Szechuan restaurant, Barshu, just across the road. It has recently introduced an all Hunanese menu, developed with the Chinese food expert Fuchsia Dunlop, and for those who like dishes that make their scalp sweat, it's a joy.
The restaurant is a tight snug of wood-lined rooms and feels like a village inn. Service, sadly, is in keeping with that at too many Chinese joints: the best you can hope for is efficiency; mostly it's a masterclass in brusque. Still, if you're looking for a hug, there are many niche websites for that; what matters here is the food, which is big and bold and defiantly antisocial. It's cooking to eat with a close friend.
Try a cold starter of crunchy, sliced white onion, with cocktail stick-thin shards of crisp beef, the whole dressed with chilli and garlic and the occasional smack of anise. Or another of slippery wood ear fungus, which lulls you with its cool crunch and then smacks you round the chops with heat. The menu includes Chairman Mao's red-braised pork – Mao was born in Hunan – the recipe for which is in Dunlop's Szechuan book. I have read it many times, but never quite summoned the will to make it. Now I don't have to. Deep red cubes of dense meat fell apart in the mouth. The fat had been braised into jelly and it came with a sauce which, if I eat enough of it, will be literally to die for.
Maybe I didn't need another pork dish but the "yard-long" green beans with planks of crisp Chinese bacon, the whole dish a big black rustling pile of umami, was irresistible. Against that the braised brisket with pine nuts, smoked bamboo shoots and chilli seemed almost light. It wasn't. This is powerful wintry food served in cosy surroundings at ungrasping prices. Argue with me if you like. Call me names if you wish. But it won't change my mind.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place
