When Jim Harkness, the new executive director of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, dines at Little Szechuan in Saint Paul, he orders in Mandarin, and sometimes he throws in a Szechuan accent, just to mess with the waiters' head. My Rake co-blogger and I will be having dinner with Jim this Sunday, September 2 at 7 p.m., and we would like to invite some Rake readers to join us. It'll be a chance to learn more about the cuisine of Szechuan, and the work that Jim is doing with IATP. We'll split the bill - we'll try to keep in under $20 per person - - and you have to pay for your own wine and beer. Probably about half the dishes will be vegetarian or seafood. If you would like to join us, please email me at iggers@rakemag.com, no later than this Friday at noon.
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Daily Secrets of the City, Fiction, News, Events and Restaurants in Minneapolis - St. Paul, Minnesota
Yeah, and stop calling China China, call it Zhongguo.
It's 'Sichuan' - not Szechuan. The former is the correct spelling in pinyin, the standard Chinese romanization taught in every Chinese school. The latter is a Western-construct, and hasn't been used seriously in decades (except by clueless restaurants in the US). Using it in this context is a little like inviting people to a dinner featuring cuisine from Ye Merrey Olde England.