Until recently, non-Americanized Chinese cuisine in Dallas had been limited to that of the Cantonese variety. Thanks to a recent crop up of restaurants specializing in regional Chinese, Dallasites can finally get a more comprehensive taste of the wide variety of Chinese cooking.

The no-frills Little Sichuan is a spicy food lover’s heaven, offering a long list of southwest Chinese dishes liberally covered in Sichuan peppercorns and chilies. A good place to start is with traditional mapo tofu, a dish of silken tofu and minced pork stewed in a fiery red, oily sauce. Mapo tofu evinces two key characteristics of Sichuanese cuisine: “ma,” numbing and “la,” spicy. The numbing characteristic comes from use of the Sichuan peppercorn, which amplifies the burning sensation caused by the chilies, driving the diner into a state of fiery euphoria (or pain, depending on your tolerance). Fat and slippery dan dan noodles topped with crunchy preserved Sichuan vegetables and ground pork is another favorite.

Other trusty menu specialties include water-boiled sliced beef or fish, twice-cooked pork (a must for bacon lovers), distinctively textured dry sautéed beef, garlicky sautéed water spinach, glazed sweet and sour eggplant, and tea-smoked duck. For the truly adventurous, daily specials are advertised on a whiteboard written in Chinese. Ask the waitress for translation help and you might be rewarded with memorable bites like house-cured Sichuan sausage or stir-fried dried tofu with seasonal chive flowers from the owner’s garden.