Ba Ren for the last time

Ever since I read Kirk's post on Ba Ren closing at the end of February, we knew we had to make one last stop...

to taste once again our favorite Hot Pepper Prawns dish...

We headed here after our miniature golf outing at Fun 4 All...

We sat in a side booth. Not too many diners there during the lunch hour.

We already knew what we wanted. As Bert placed our orders, I went to the cold appetizers case and asked for a dish of three of the items: fried peanuts with little fried fish, seaweed, and boiled greens with shelled soy beans. My favorite were the peanuts. TC liked the dried fish and seaweed. I didn't really like the seaweed too much since it tasted pickled.

We got #124...

and #231, and a non-spicy dish for TC, the Cashew Shrimp with Peas.

Our three dishes...

TC's cashew shrimp with peas - this was the "safe" dish for her that we knew she'd enjoy. Her dish wasn't that exciting, but at least it wouldn't mess her up internally. The sauce for her dish was very bland. This shrimp dish was the "Pat Boone" or the "Donny Osmond" of our other dishes which could be likened to Mick Jagger, Steven Tyler, Michael Hutchence and Jim Morrison rolled up into one.

The boiled fish filet in chili sauce topped with cilantro. This was super good! As in our previous visits (linked at the end of this post), we'd enjoyed this in the past so we wanted it again.

I had to scrape off a lot of those pepper seeds. You're not supposed to drink the broth, unless you have a cast iron stomach. But seriously, it's just there for flavor and you're not supposed to drink it. The heat from all those chilis was strong but I kept coming back to this dish. The fish is so soft and tastes so good!

We ordered another of our favorites, the fried prawns with chili peppers and Szechuan peppercorns.

Can you see the Szechuan peppercorn pods? I bit into a few for old time's sake.

I didn't notice until I posted these photos, but they didn't give us the black bean dessert here. It probably would have helped our stomachs a bit, but not to worry. We soothed the burn with ice cream when we got home. So long Ba Ren. I wish the owners well and hope they return to the restaurant scene in the future.

Who else ate at Ba Ren?

My previous posts -
My first visit with Kirk and Captain Jack in February 2009, my revisit with the Educator GF's the following month, and Summer 2009 with Kirk and the Food Ho

Kirk had posted multiple times - here are just a few of his posts through theyears : Seasonal Menu - 2008, Turning up the Heat Part 3 - 2009, and  a revisit in 2010. There's tons more but you can do the search on his blog for that.

The Food Ho (early 2011), along with Kirbie who went twice Visit 1 and
Visit 2....

And because I can't resist a good pun, here's a video by...who else? THE RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS:

One of my favorite songs. Too bad this one is "edited" (all the bad words are blanked out)! Gotta love that fierce bass by Flea!