West End Garden, South Brisbane

I am slowly working my way through all of the Vietnamese/Chinese restaurants in the area, and last Friday went to yet another one:  West End Garden.  The first thing I'll say about West End Garden is that it has very nice decor, perhaps the best I've encountered since starting this blog.  One actually gets the feeling of being in a real garden somewhere in the orient.  Decor aside, I ordered satay chicken skewers as an entree, and Szechaun beef (or as their menu calls it "Sichuan" beef) for the main course.  The chicken skewers were perhaps the smallest I've been served, but they were also the cheapest, so I guess it evens out.  I was really quite taken with the satay sauce.  It was smooth and creamy and the right level of bite I want from a satay sauce.  The only real drawback was that the sauce had obviously been refrigerated, whereas the chicken had clearly just come off the grill or hotplate or however it was cooked.  Had the sauce been at room temperature or otherwise heated up I would have been all the more impressed.  Don't let this detract from the fact that this was a particularly good satay sauce however.  As for the Szechuan beef.  I had only sampled Szechuan beef once before and was so happy with that experience that I have made a point of trying the dish at other restaurants that offer it.  Unfortunately, not all Chinese restaurants serve Szechuan beef, and this was my main reason for dining at West End Garden on this occasion.  West End Garden's Szechuan beef is spicy, sweet, and tangy.  Whereas the only other Szechaun beef I have sampled is more savoury.  I prefer the latter.  However, I'm not sure which is more authentic.  Sweetness and tanginess aside, the beef was tender and thinly sliced, much in the manner that I have come to expect from Chinese restaurants.  As someone who considers eating vegetables a chore, there were no vegetables I liked in the dish, but this is also something that I have come to expect from Chinese restaurants, yet I keep going to them based on other strengths.  The dish was only mildly spicy, and this fact disappointed me because as far as I can recall, the Szechuan beef was the only dish on the menu with the caveat of "HOT".  So while my main course was somewhat disappointing, I was not entirely displeased with the meal.  The question now becomes "is Szechuan beef supposed to be sweet and tangy?".  I'm willing to go elsewhere to find out.  However, if the answer to the question is "yes", then I am only ever likely to order Szechuan beef at Trang, which is where I had my first experience with the dish and enjoyed greatly.