Lucky Strike – CLOSED

Editor's note: Lucky Strike has closed.

If you want to sweat, Sichuan spot Lucky Strike is more reliable than a party at Holocene. Inside a red-tinted eatery that looks like a Chinatown haunt taken over by '90s-era ironists, the spice can get serious pretty fast.

Lucky Strike's classic hot pepper chicken bath ($12) will send fluids out your eyes and nose, with Sichuan peppers numbing your tongue to everything but heat. You can eat a plate of pig intestines ($11) whose vaporous spice will cause the same tumult in your own digestive tract.

Photo: Hilary Sander Photo: Hilary Sander

But there's a secret to Lucky Strike: It also offers dishes of surprising subtlety.

The simple sauteed bok choy ($7) is a perfectly executed swirl of garlic and soy, always just delightfully crisp enough to maintain its structure. The pickle-fish-mushroom soup, meanwhile, comes in a pot big enough to run a soup line, but its pleasures are more delicate—lightly pickled cabbage and chili in a broth with noodles made of mushroom.

A simple beef shank appetizer, meanwhile, is livened in texture by nuts, made bittersweet with celery alongside the peppers. Rather than treat the place like a dare, the trick is to play subtlety against spice.

Photo: Hilary Sander Photo: Hilary Sander

Pro tip: If you decide to get the hot stuff, go for the Vice Is Cooler cocktail with cucumber.

GO: 3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 206-8292, luckystrikepdx.com. 4-10 pm Sunday-Thursday, 4-11 pm Friday-Saturday. $$.

Willamette Week

Matthew Korfhage

Matthew Korfhage has lived in St. Louis, Chicago, Munich and Bordeaux, but comes from Portland, where he makes guides to the city and writes about food, booze and books. He likes the Oxford comma but can't use it in the newspaper.

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