It's really offal good

I am so far outside my comfort zone that I think my gums are bleeding. From the selection of luridly photographed dishes on the menu, there are only a few I know. And some, frankly, scare me.

Take the disturbingly brown 'hundred-year' eggs (described euphemistically as the Chinese take on blue cheese. Translation: you lot will find these utterly repellent), the sea cucumber (or sea slug), the frog jelly in papaya or the acres of offal.

Those dishes not composed of intestinal tubes come across like a sop for tourists. This is the food that goes with another kind of offal: testicles - it's dick-swinging dining.

I don't pretend to be an expert on Sichuanese food, unlike estimable food writer Fuchsia Dunlop, who is consulting on this intriguing new enterprise.

I've explored it in London's few places offering this multi-layered and fiery cuisine (Blue Thames in Wandsworth, Sichuan in Acton and the late Panda Si Chuen on Old Compton Street).

I love the spooky, mouth-numbing effect of the firecrackery Sichuan peppercorns and the perfumed heat of the Facing Heaven chillies.

I know the subtlety of the fishfragrant dishes. It's just that nowhere in London has taken it as unnervingly far as Bar Shu.

This Soho venture has already had a slew of swooning reviews so we knew to pre-order hotpot.

Beyond that, we were floundering. Staff, though more amenable than most of their Chinatown counterparts, aren't much help: answers to questions range from the gnomic to the unfathomable. The (steep) bill, too, is impenetrable: squiggles and no suggestion of service. But be warned, it's there.

Our starters arrive: chewy, oily strips of accurately described 'numbing and hot dried beef'. They go beautifully with the vinegary coolness of pickled vegetables.

Then 'man and wife offal slices' in a peanutty, chillied dressing. We suspect what these might be but ask the waitress. 'Ear,' she says. There is some cartilaginous matter in there but we don't believe this is the whole story.