Winter has us craving the heat of Sichuan cuisine. Fiery chili peppers and Sichuan peppercorns, with their gently numbing tingle, are antidotes to Jack Frost. So we head out Route 9 to Framingham and find spare ambience, quirky menu translations, but ultimately satisfying Sichuan cuisine.

Red Pepper opened in a strip mall in 2007 and is now owned by business partners Bing Jiao and Hua Chun Zhang. Originally from Chongqing in southwestern China, Jiao and Zhang, who is head chef, owned a restaurant in Pennsylvania before relocating to this region. The restaurant occupies the first floor. The second floor is owned by a Brazilian group that runs a nightclub late on weekends.