Bellevue’s Bamboo Garden offers a regular menu for the timid, but I recommend taking a look at the “Walk on the Wild Side” menu. Here you’ll find adventurous dishes like swimming fire fish, pork-tongue slices, and sour & spicy jellyfish. My favorite is the spicy cauldron called The Other Parts of the Pig, with pork intestines, pig-blood cubes, tofu chunks, basil, and pickled cabbage in a tangy broth. It’s spicy, earthy, spicy, tangy, spicy. Did I mention spicy? This is, after all, a Sichuanese restaurant, and the offal (other pig parts, in this case) only adds to the authenticity.

202 106th Pl. N.E., Bellevue, 425-688-7991, bamboogardendining.com

Read all of our picks for Food & Drink, and explore the rest of this year’s edition of Best of Seattle.