Red Chili

The food was authentic and the environment was great. However, DO NOT order two spicy dishes together because it will burn your tears away. I would say some dishes require more meat and less chili because it was red chili on red chili, hotter than hell fire on jet fuel. Taste so good but definitely consider some pepto bismol and ice cream afterward.

We were immediately greeted and seated. I would rate this restaurant as a 3.5. Authentic food and very tasty, SPICY, but flavorful. We started with the steamed dumplings and wonton soup, followed by the shrimp hot pot. I typically do not eat food with this level of heat, but it was so full of flavor that I kept going back for more. The combination of spices, herbs, and ethnic seasonings made this dinner one to remember.

Excellent flavor, one of my favorite restaurants in Syracuse. The drop pot style fish is particularly delicious.

Delicious, spicy, very flavorful food, and courteous service.

The food is great, but the service is just terrible here. I was willing to deal with it for a long time because the food quality outweighed the inconvenience, but now that the service is even worse the scales have tipped for me. You can expect to wait at least an hour for your food to arrive, even when the restaurant is empty, more like 90 minutes if they are busy. And delivery? A $ 30 minimum is pretty high to start with, but then you will still have to wait at least two hours for your food. Last time they also «accidentally» charged my credit card three times after taking 2.5 hours to deliver the food. It’s really a shame that I won’t be going back, because I did love the food. But I can’t deal with this terrible service anymore.

Still awesome! My wife and I tried the fish stomachs. Before you say «yuck!», try them. They were actually quite good. They have a chicken gizzard texture to them and are served with a hot sauce and vegetables. Don’t be the typical Westerner ordering Sweet and Sour chicken or egg rolls! Try something outside your comfort zone! You might be surprised and smack yourself for not trying new things sooner.

This review is in regards to the hot pot option at this restaurant. If you’ve gone to eat hotpot before, you will be disappointed in what you find here. There is no way that they can justify those kind of prices for their hotpot items for their mediocre level of taste. The prices are set at more than 300% what you would pay for at the supermarket for UNCOOKED items that they just put on a plate. Waitress didn’t check in on us at all, even with an empty restaurant.
Bottom line: If you want to come here for hotpot, I recommend that you take your money elsewhere because by the end you will feel like you’ve been robbed.

On a Sunday evening, I ordered one dish for take-​out. After 30 minutes of waiting and after having paid for my order, I left, without my food. The hostess watched me leave and never said anything. It’s ridiculous to wait 30 minutes for take-​out in Syracuse on a Sunday night.

I went to the red chili a couple of days ago and it was awesome. The food was really good and it’s by far the perfect Chinese restaurant in Syracuse. I had the general Tao chicken and it was tasty and delicious, the hot pot stoves on the tables were cool and the whole hot pot itself is neet, also it made me feel like I was in China. So for now on, this is my favorite Chinese restaurant and I plan on coming back here in the future.

Double cooked pork excellent flavor but very fatty. Make sure you love cumin when getting # 48a, very overwhelming. Very refreshing to have traditional Chineese cooking. We’ll definitely go again.
Order the crunchy cucumber for an app… very, very good.

Red chili is awesome. Their soupy pork is to die for. I want to try some of their other dishes, but when you find something as great as that, it is hard not to keep re-​ordering. Everything is obviously made fresh. Just great flavors and an incredible variety.

If i could give this place 3.5 stars i would as it deserves more than a 3 but not quite a 4. My boyfriend and I had dinner here last weekend (Sunday). We arrived to find a practically empty houde other than two couples/​families that were there before us.
We were immediately greeted by the friendly hostess and seated. We ordered the bubble tea smoothies (featured on the pictures on the door) in mango (my fav) and passion fruit (delicious but not as sweet as the mango).
Next we ordered our hotpot flavors (chicken and house style). As someone who has been to China and experienced true authentic hotpots, i can say that this place offers a great selection. We ordered a veriety of drop ins from frog legs, quail eggs, beef, pork, mushrooms, bok choy, eggplant, vermicelli, etc.
After everything arrived, we realized that we went a bit overboard with so many options. The veggie options were just as tasty as the meat options. While our order was being prepared we stopped by what i’ll call «the flavor station,» to make our sauces to dip our meat and veggies in. I did not see any such stations in China but this was a great addition.
When the food arrived we had fun mixing and matching different cooking and sauce combos to see what taste best. I do wish that some of the items did not come frozen but we are in CNY and it’s hard to get certain items fresh here.
The host and hostess were attentive and did their best to ensure we had a good experience. As the two adjacent televions featured «The Voice,» in China we ate away and had a fun experience.
Overall, this was a diffrrent experience than the typical Syracuse eatery so it was refreshing. The Hotpot broths that we had lacked strong flavor without the sauce offerings but then again our broths were mild. Keep in mind that if you dont how to prepare a great sauce you might not enjoy it. We had some failures along the way too! Mix ane match and dip and dunk. Nice experience. I would return but for a cooked meal instead!!!

Very good, have never tried the hot pot but have ordered several dishes off the menu with good results.
The best dish we’ve tried is the spicy minced pork with vermicelli noodles in red chili sauce. The noodles are the chewy textured clear «glass noodles». The flavor of this dish is amazing.
The fried dumplings are also really really tasty.
Other good dishes: The crispy diced chicken pieces with lots of peppers, singapore chow mei fun, beef dry pot, smoky pork with tea tree mushrooms (very bacony and savory), beef with black pepper, shredded pork, baby bok choi or chinese brocolli with oyster or garlic sauce.
4 stars because a few times the food was so salty as to be inedible: spicy crispy style beef, and because when they’re really busy or really slow you oftentimes get ignored and do not get water or tea refills.

Very average — maybe we ordered wrong or it was a bad night for them but nothing special here and would not go back.

I love the hot pot. Some people don’t get the appeal of it, but seriously here’s why you should love hot pot:
1. It’s soup fondue. I love soup and I love fondue. Win-​win.
2. You get to cook your own food.
3. You just dump everything in there and chill out as it cook.
If that doesn’t win you over, then I don’t know what will. But eating hot pot does bring fond memories of my childhood so I will always choose hot pot over anything else. That said, all I’ve eaten at Red Chili is hot pot.
I have been here twice. The first time I came with my dude and got the whole chicken broth and order plenty of meats and vegetables. Pretty delicious and service was just okay.
The second time I came I was alone and arrived a little over an hour before closing. I of course ordered hot pot yet again. It was slightly busier than the first time I came, so I waited a little longer which is no biggie. When the broth and sides came out, the waitress set the broth on the table without turning on the broiler and the sides off the cart. Halfway through this, the waitress just walks away without a word. I sat there in confusion for five minutes wondering if she was going to come back. When I realized so wasn’t returning (she was helping out another table at this point), I called another server over. She was more helpful and I thought that she would be my savior to salvage my dining experience. Alas, I was wrong. After she helped turn on the broiler and set everything on the table, that was pretty much the last I saw of any service until I was finished with my hot pot. I could have overlooked this, however around 10PM (they close at 10:30PM that evening) I was the only table left. I believe the servers had forgotten about me at that time because they were hosting a birthday shindig in the back, so they dimmed the lights of the dining area and sang happy birthday karaōke pretty loud. This lasted for 15 minutes. Once they realized I was still here, they turned up the light, turned down the volume, and gave me my check. This bizarre dining experience just turned me off so much that I have not returned since then (dined around March).
Their hot pot is really delicious, and while I haven’t tried anything else outside of that everything else looked delicious while I was creeping on other patrons’ tables. If service is really important to you (it definitely is for me), I would be leery about coming here. I probably won’t return because of my last experience, however don’t let my review prevent you from trying what could possibly be the best Szechuan food you ever had in your life.

Went here for date night to try out a new-​to-​us place. I was really hungry, but my husband not so much. We ordered the shrimp roll (2), nicely fried rolls with cabbage and some minced shrimp inside, accompanied with your average duck sauce. Their menu is traditional Chinese with some many exotic sounding dishes. I opted for the fish fillets in bean sauce in hopes of getting something close to what China Road has (whole crispy fish in spicy bean sauce) and my husband ordered the pork soupy style. My fish was close in taste to China Road’s dish and I liked not having to deal with any bones or skeleton, but did miss the extra crispiness as this was fried but swimming in sauce. Though it didn’t have any pepper symbols next to it, it definitely was a 2 out of 4 in the spiciness category. I loved my dish!
In both dishes you could see the large amounts of chili oil used. This was a bit of a downer for my husband as too much oil can cause stomach issues. The pork was extremely fatty, but he doesn’t like that sort of thing. The sauce used spices that were eh, okay. He barely touched his dish and didn’t want to take it home.
Waitresses seemed to switch mid-​way through. First waitress didn’t seem to be thrilled to wait on the two of us (and we were easy and friendly), the second waitress was very pleasant.
Would come back again to try some lunch specials and to have that fish fillets in bean sauce dish again.

This is not your average Chinese restaurant. It was more authentic (or so it seemed) than most.
Food was very flavorful, and was served in large quantities.
Little warning: 3 peppers is actually pretty spicy!
My only complaint is that their food is unnecessarily salty.
Will definitely add this to the rotation!

Red chili is located on Erie Boulevard in what used to be a Mexican restaurant, a Dim Sum restaurant, and s few other iterations before Red Chili stepped in. The food is phenomenal, but the there are a few issues that keep me from rating it higher.
They advertise a full bar, but only offer beer and wine, so that was mildly disappointing, but nothing too worrisome, especially when it turned out that their wine pours are rather generous.
They also heavily advertise their Szechuan hot pots. It’s listed on the marquee in front of the place, a neon sign on the window, and a specials chalkboard in the doorway, but when we ordered what we thought were hot pots, we received an entrée on a sizzling platter and another dish.
Since every table has a heating element on it, we were a bit confused. Where were these mystical hot pots?
We certainly were able to get over it quickly because the food we did get, like I said, was phenomenal. And so fast. Like, maybe four or five minutes after we ordered two giant dishes arrived with sides of rice.
Many of these reviews say the service is inattentive. You do have to get a servers attention in order to get more drinks or your check. And as we cashed out we asked about the hot pots and how to order them and were shown a huge menu that we didn’t receive when we sat down.
So the service, the lack of a full bar and not being able to get the hot pots are why I dropped a star, but this place is definitely one of those gems with authentic food that you should absolutely try.
The portions are generous and the food was incredible. We ordered a sizzling style pork that came with crispy rice cakes and soupy style chicken. The chicken was spicy and flavorful without being too hot to eat, and the spice actually made the sizzling pork taste a bit sweeter than usual, so Tay dish combo worked well for us.
After getting acclimated the first time, my expectations are set, which I think will lead to an even better experience next time. I’m really looking forward to going back and trying one of those hot pots!

If you’re looking for Szechuan food in Syracuse, this is as good as I have found. After moving here from Philadelphia, I was really missing all of the great Szechuan food in Chinatown, and I truly didn’t expect Syracuse to have anything that could compare. I was pleasantly surprised the first time I tried Red Chili. Everything I’ve tried here has been great, but the 3 dishes I always come back to are the Wontons with Red Chili Oil, Ma Po Tofu, and the Sizzling Dry Pot Fish. Do yourself a favor and try something a little out of your comfort zone here. There is a lot to be experienced!
My one minor complaint is that the service here can be a bit dicey on busy nights, but the food is so good I am hardly bothered by the wait. Don’t expect this to be a quick in-​and-​out dinner, however.

I took my fiancé and her parents here for
Both her and her moms birthday dinner. There really isnt any legit hotpot restaurants in cuse. I ordered sesame beef and they ordered the hot pot with like 10 different fillings. Everything was amazing. The sesame beef was the best you can get outside of nyc and the hot pot ingredients were fresh and tasty. All four of us loved it. The price was a tad high but we probably over indulged a bit. The interior is remarkable and extremely nice. Don’t let the exterior or the car dealership fool you like it did us. I WILL be going back soon!