Chongqing Szechuan Restaurant

Great food, great service. They typed in the wifi pw for us. We didn’t have to worry about ordering the lovely lady took great care of meeting everybody’s special needs, from no mushrooms to vegetarians to kosher they managed to get us all happy and satisfied. Even they were about to close down at midnight they stayed open for us another hour.

Eat the fried chicken. Don’t question, just order. There is nothing else like it on this planet.

The Chongqing Szechuan Restaurant on Elgin street is a real gem amongst restaurants in the Soho area. To be fair, I’m not a big fan of Szechuan food, as I do find is all overly spicy, and just trashes my taste buds for about four days. However, if I’m feeling adventurous, or more to the point, want to give a visiting friend an experience of crazy hot food, then I will always come to Chongqing Szechuan Restaurant.
The menu is very similar to all the other Szechuan restaurants in the area, serving a variety of dishes like; deep fried chicken with whole dried chilies, and ma po tofu. However, what makes this restaurant great, especially in Mrs L’s opinion, is that I have an identical menu but entirely vegetarian and mock meat. They are essentially exactly the same dishes, but using vegetables or meet supplements. The preparation is exactly the same.
Beyond the food, we also come for the great service. The manager/​owner Barbara (or Ba-​ba-​la!) is an absolute hoot. She always refers to me by name, and if she doesn’t know your name she will just call you «Lady», even if you are a guy. There are a lots of reviews that criticise the service, and whilst Barbara is delightful, she can be a bit scatty. Just give her a break, she is running the front of house pretty much single-​handedly. As a special treat, she often finishes our meal off with a round of complimentary drinks.
The restaurant itself is very small, probably only able to seat 15 as an absolute maximum. If you do want to come, make sure you book. This also serves as a quick check to see if the restaurant is in fact open, and sometimes it randomly closes for holidays.
I do thoroughly recommend a visit, the food is great, albeit tear-​inducing hot, the service, whilst a bit varied in quality, is always friendly. I am sure you will have a good time (unless of course you are made of stone).