Sze Chuan Cuisine

Nice décor. Reasonable service. We ordered 3 dishes including the ribs. The ribs were good but after a while, just kind of oily. Unfortunately the two other dishes were oily too and so it all kind of tasted the same. Still worth going and trying a regional cuisine.

Looking for some authentic Chinese with a kick? Look no further, this place will Bruce Lee you right in the gut. It was just my wife and I so we ordered about 5 things. This meant we were able to bring some home for some more heat the next day. Here is what we got in order from best to least favorite:
Special Heavens Grilled Ribs (fall right off the bone)
Hot and Spicy Diced Chicken Chongqing Style (very good, but light on the chicken)
Dumplings in red oil (great tasting and full of flavor)
Edible Tree Fungus Villa Style (love it, but not spicy enough for me)
Sautéed String Beans (very large portion)
Egg Roll (they are free if you check in on Unilocal,and not worth getting)
Service was typical for a Chinatown spot, which means it was average. It’s at the end of one of the main streets in Chinatown, so stretch your legs and do some walking afterwards.

Pretty tasty! Love the ambiance. Modern, tasteful and still has a very authentic Chinese feel (aka it’s not super Americanized like a of other Chinese restaurants around the River North area). Definitely recommend this place!

Just by chance we stopped for lunch and was rewarded by some of the BEST! food ever. Prices was fair, service was good and the food, oh the food. Flavor and aroma! what can we say but «we’ll be back!

We were visiting from Houston and wanted to go to Chinatown for dinner. Our cab driver was Chinese and he asked if we liked spicy food and if we wanted authentic Chinese food.
He highly recommended this restaurant. Inside is clean, the staff was very friendly. The food was beyond amazing!!! Between the three of us we had Tea Leaf Smoked Duck, Fried Lamb in Cumin and Pork Ribs.
Again, I can’t tell you just how amazing the food is.
Thanks Zhimin!!!

They were not doing very well at my favorite Szechuan dish — boiling fish. Quite pricy but the probably the smallest size I have ever had in a Szechuan restaurant. The vegetables was just so so. Double cooked pork was a great surprise! Thin slice and authentic flavor! Mapo tofu was also not bad.

Solid Chinese food! It’s always nice to find restaurants like these where you know you’ll get good Chinese family-​style dishes. I pretty much order pork belly whenever it’s around/​available on a menu and can vouch for the pork belly here. So flavorful that we got 2 orders of it! All the other dishes we ordered were delicious too (spicy whole fish, water spinach, sauteed lamb, pork with green pepper). We ordered 6 dishes between 9 people and the total came up to about $ 12/​person. Super satisfied.

First brought here by a friend, the food is so good that I come to Chinatown again next week just to come to this restaurant. Price is cheap if you order a few dishes and share among friends. My favorite is boiled fish fillet. The Kung Pao chicken is also good.

I like their authentic Chengdu spicy food. If you want try the real spicy, definitely go there. They use the special and good quality chili peppers to make their dishes spicy and hot! Some people may think it’s too much. But that’s why I like it! Spicy food is not for everybody. :-) Recommended!

My only favourite sze chuan restaurant in Chicago! Their food can’t be more decent and authentic.

Not my cup of tea and I almost feel bad writing this review. While I appreciate the szechuan cuisine, I just don’t care for dishes where it’s so numbing, I could be eating glass or garlic and not know the difference flavor-​wise.
Anyways when I could taste the food, the flavors were good. The ambience is nice, wait staff attentive and happy to make suggestions. The restaurant was clean and seemed appropriate/​intimate enough for dates but also welcoming to families. Parking was easy.

To give a little background, I was first introduced to this restaurant by my cousin who is a Sichuan native and he ranks this as one of the top Sichuan restaurants that he’s had in the midwest, so you know its at least somewhat authentic.
FOOD: I always give this word of warning about Sichuan food — it is often drowned in chili oil and has a very unique heat — «ma la» or «numbing spice». For those who are unfamilar with this spice, or if you’d like to limit your oil intake, you may not love this place.
The dishes here are a hit or… just okay. One dish served here in particular that has impressed me is the «Twice Cooked Pork» (hui guo rou) — a fatty, slightly spicy, aromatic dish sautéed with leeks. The pork has a similar texture and taste as a thick slab of medium cooked bacon. Another popular Sichuan dish done fairly well here is the «Hot and Spicy Diced Chicken Chong Qing Style». Yes, it may look intimidating with all the red peppers, but its not as bad as it looks. The chicken is fried, so think Asian style spicy KFC… but infinitely better and in smaller pieces.
My favorite dish that blew me away is something not on the menu, and definitely falls under the category of «adventure dining» — I’ll leave my comments out, but ask the server about dishes not their menu if you’re interested.
The only dishes that disappointed me so far was the «Sichuan Cold Noodles» (Liang Fen) because the sauce was overly salted instead of spicy and the portion was fairly small, and the free spring rolls for checking in — but hey, can’t complain too much about free food.
PRICE: Very fair. It’s always been less than $ 20/​person (including tip). Pay in cash if you can!
SERVICE: You’re at a Chinese restaurant — what do you expect? No one will be checking on you every few minutes, but the second you wave someone will becon your call.
ATMOSPHERE: Impressive décor inside with the attempt to look upscale. Agree with other reviewers though — bathrooms could be better maintained.
What I love most about this place though is that the menu is very expansive, covering all of Sichuan’s most popular authentic dishes. I’ll definitely be back to try out more whenever I’m back in Chicago.

I came ame here with a party of 4 on a Saturday night at around 7:15pm.
There was a 15 min wait but the service was quick
Environment: (²⁄₅)
— you can tell that they are trying to be a fancier Chinese restaurant but the detailing looked kinda cheap
— not very clean especially the bathroom :(it was pretty gross and they really need to deep clean everything
Service: (3.5÷5)
— the service was okay but really quick for everything
Food: (³⁄₅)
— Not very authentic i would say but my friends said that this is considered one of the best sze chuan restaurants in chicago chinatown. I had had tried a ton of szechuan restaurants and none of the dishes were szechuan spicy, in fact it was very very mild.

Food here just isn’t very good, at least it wasn’t on my visit.
I ordered the cold szechuan noodles for an appetizer, expecting a typical dan-​dan noodles dish. The sauce had the barest hint of sesame oil or peanut flavor and had an unsettling gritty or pasty consistency (hard to describe, really). An order of double-​cooked pork had so much salt that it was inedible, not to mention that the pork belly strips were tough and did not seem very fresh, and the dish was otherwise lacking in any other flavorings. Lamb sauteed Xin Jiang style was very dry and overwhelmed by the amount of cumin (and I usually like lamb with cumin). The only dish I liked was the wood ears fungus, but that was not enough to save the meal.

I am native from Chengdu and this is one of the best Sichuan style chinese resturant I have been to in US. And I have been to a lot.
It is good for dating, friends get together and family meals. The décor is very modern and very nicely done. The menu is very authentic and l wish I could order everything. Everything we ordered turns out to be exceptional. The service is very attentive and friendly. Price is quite reasonable.
We got the shui zhu yu, moyu and duck, silk squash with tofu, ginger chicken, pickled chicken and huiguo rou. Honestly, best dishes I have had, very flavorful and nicely presented in reasonable portion. I just wish we have one near DC.

Best Sze Chuan Cuisine In Chicago. Very authentic and very fresh. However, I can’t handle all the heat. Some dishes I have to request to have it tuned down a notch. They are very good about accommodating such requests. The servers are very friendly too, but I think they are a little short on staff.

Recently, A Chinese student of mine recommended this restaurant. He said it was the most authentic Chinese food he’s eaten since coming to the United States. I have to say this is probably the best Chinese food I’ve ever had.
The storefront is really unremarkable and you could easily walk by without a second thought. However, once you’re inside the restaurant opens up into a large modern staircase and an elegant dining room decorated with modern Chinese décor. I was really surprised when I walked in.
I tried all of the dishes my student recommended. I might be forgetting something but I think I tried the following: frog legs, tree fungus, pork skin, cold steamed chicken, crab and tofu soup, ma po tofu, eggplant in garlic sauce, whole steamed fish, pork ribs, and these potatoes that were sliced thin like noodles. I can’t recall the name of that last dish but it was delicious. I’ve never had anything like that. You slurp up some noodles but it’s like eating a baked potato. The tree fungus was probably my favorite. It was like a Chinese salad made with mushrooms and herbs. It was a great way to start the feast. The eggplant was really popular with my group. Everyone ate a lot of it. I even took some home. Also, the pork ribs were especially noteworthy. The meat was so tender!
The frog legs and pork skin weren’t my favorite. I’m adventurous so I’ll try anything. However, the season on the pork skin was very unusual and I didn’t care for it. I’d order almost everything else again.
This place is great for groups because everyone can sample a lot of different dishes without paying too much. I can’t wait to go back and try some more amazing Chinese food!

This summarizes my dinner… Tried this place just to try a new restaurant my friends and I have never tried before but we are not returning…
When you walk in the interior design and decorations may impress you but do not be fooled. This is probably the best that they could offer.
We ordered an appetizer, veggie dish, and 2 different entrées.
Appetizer — pot stickers– the pan fried outer skin slides off as you eat it. It does not stay intact. The flavor is just ok. Tastes like something you would buy from the supermarket. I would give it ⁴⁄₁₀.
Kung pao chicken– there were too many spices that were not well blended together. Pretty big ginger slices and hot pepper in the dish. Nice peanuts roasted along with the chicken dish but again like the appetizer. Less than mediocre. Give it a ⁴⁄₁₀. Tasted like fast food Chinese. Edible but would I eat it again? No.
Duck casserole– beware !!! Do not order this because it is first of all overpriced, hardly any meat, lots of bones, and be sure to have some heartburn/​acid reducer with you. This dish is very very spicy in a will make you sweat and cause heart burn kind of a way. The most amount of peppers I have seen in a dish! Basically looking at a soup dish that is all red in color with some meat inside. Total waste of money…
Lastly ordered the garlic Chinese broccoli. This was the best thing that we ordered of the night. Texture crispy, not overcooked. May have been a little too salty but it was the best dish of the night and that is sad.
Overall, would not go back to eat at this restaurant it was just someplace we went to fill our stomachs but way overpriced for food that was not satisfying to our taste buds.

Went here for dinner after the Chinatown Fair on Sunday and I thought it’d be a great experience. But boyyyy am I wrong.
When we went inside, there was only one family eating so it was not busy at all. We were seated promptly and given menus. But that’s when everything went down hill with the service. We ordered the cold spicy chicken appetizer which was okay. We also had the dry chili chicken which was HORRIBLE because they cheaped out and gave us mostly fried bread crumbs. Their Mapo tofu was also inedible because it had too much white powder and it left a disgusting after taste. The spicy fish filet soup and the bok choy was okay. We also ordered some spicy ribs as recommended by out waitress, and when the dish came out, it was so small! There was barely any meat on the ribs! I have posted a picture of it so you can check it out.
After our food came out, all the staff members started to eat dinner and that’s when the service stopped. No one came to refill our water, tea, or checked to see if we needed anything else. They were too busy eating to realize that we were waving at them to get the check. After finally receiving our check, no one came back to our table to pick it up so we had to walk up there to pay, and they made it seem like it was our fault for disturbing their dinner for trying to pay.
This place needs to get their act together. Not a great impression if they are trying to attract customers. I’d rather eat the the original Lao Szechuan restaurant in Chinatown square. Better food and WAYYYY better service.

Yet another Szechuan venue in good olé Chinatown…
My friend and I finally gave it a try. We ordered the Szechuan dumplings in red spicy oil, husband and wife’s lung-​side beef, and Szechuan noodles with brisket. Believe me, none of those dishes are as frightening as their mouthful, lack-​of-​English-​sense, names.
The dumplings were actually swimming in a bowl of hot and oily sauce but they were tasty. The dumpling wrap was thin and they were filled with pork. The lung-​side beef slices were topped with an overly-​generous portion of cilantro. If you like it, great. If not, have fun picking them out. I enjoyed them but my dinner mate wouldn’t have any of it. The Szechuan noodles are NOT house-​made. Don’t expect any of those elastic and light tasting textures. The portion was generous but I doubt I will order it again.
Parking was easy considering how it was a weekday around 9pm. Service was quick and polite. And the interior is a huge upgrade from the previous establishment!
Note: All three of those dishes were spicy and oily. They didn’t sit too well…