If there was any other way to clear your sinuses and give your tear ducts and sweat glands a work out – its to get some Hunanese cooking into your belly. Holy smokes Batman call the firemen my mouth was on FIRE tonight!

The menu and all the pictures of the glorious food on offer at Golden Day in no way prepared me for just how hot the food was going to be. I’m proud to say that I made it to the end – but not without the help of about a million litres of water, sympathetic looks from the wait-staff and endless supplies of serviettes to wipe the sweat away. Don’t get me wrong because food at Golden Day is delicious. I particularly liked the Aubergine Stew, and not just because it was the least hot dish of the evening and looked exactly as it promised in the picture! It was tasty and what’s more extremely moreish.

Worth a look too is the Dry Pot Chicken which comes presented in a wok on top of little flame. Don’t be deceived by this mild looking dish though. The chillis, and there are chillis aplenty, are not mild in the least. The hint with this dish is eat quickly as the slower you eat the more intense the heat of the chillis become … unless that’s your sort of thing to eat something as hot as possible. On me – it was not a pretty sight! Did anyone order a fire-breathing dragon?

The Dry Fried Seabass was another little sneaky one for heat. Interestingly though fairly similar flavourings were used on the seabass tasted substantially different to the dry pot chicken.

We also grabbed some Potato Pies but not only were they pricey (6 for £5.80) they didn’t really work as a substitute to good old plain rice and flavour-wise there wasn’t much to them. Still, since that was the only disappointment for the night I was pretty pleased overall with Golden Day. What did help a (little) bit with the heat was the (cold) mushroom salad. Soo refreshing!

Golden Day is the kind of place that you want to come back to time and time again – whether its for the intense flavours, or the challenge of beating the heat, or for the authenticity of the regional Chinese food.

You may want to bring a fire extiguinsher. Or go to Snog like I did: