Jess loves spicy food. And I love Chinese food. Which puts Sichuan cuisine in perfect Venn diagram overlap between the two of us.

And though I’ll occasionally make it myself at home, it’s definitely a bit of an undertaking. The dry pot I made last week had no fewer than 15 ingredients in the spice oil alone, and a similar number in the chili paste, even before getting to the main ingredients. As I noted at the time, some dishes are worth cooking from scratch just so you’ll never begrudge money spent ordering them at a restaurant instead.

To that end, I’m extremely lucky to work just a few blocks from Mala Project, which makes perhaps the best dry pot in Manhattan. While hot pot is Sichuan’s signature dish – essentially, a spicy broth fondue – dry pot is, instead, pretty much what it sounds like it would be: all the spices and ingredients of hot pot, but without the broth, stir-fried instead.

It’s an amazingly flavorful dish, albeit an atomically hot one. So, even if you might end up paying for it on the way out the day after, if you’re looking for a quick, delicious, and relatively cheap lunch or dinner in Midtown, I can’t recommend Mala Project (41 W 46th St) highly enough.

In fact, I’m wrapping this post, so I can head there right now, for some take-out to satisfy Jess’ days-long craving. As the Chinese proverb goes, talk doesn’t cook rice.