Spicy Sichuan

Only ate here once needless to say I can cook better than these people! I couldn’t even eat but two bites ! The ramen was so disgusting I will not ever come back even if they gave me the food for free! If you like this kind of food come to my house and let me cook for you, could always use some extra cash

I just got back from a trip to China a couple weeks ago, and the thing I miss the most is Sichuan food. I scoured Unilocal for a restaurant in Houston, and took my partner and a friend to introduce them to the cuisine.
Their shredded pork and spicy eggplant are pretty much spot on what I expected, though I think they may have dampened the spicy level just a liiiiittle because we are all white. I get it though; I’d probably do the same thing in their situation, haha.
I definitely recommend both of those dishes, and I’m sure they’re the runaway favorites of all their white customers because they are (as I understand it from the people who made it for me in Sichuan Province) signature regional dishes.
Very friendly staff; you should be able to get by with minimal English, and they were super on top of water refills. Also, they were very excited to find out how we thought it was, and were accommodating of our general lack of Chinese language competency, hah.
I plan to come back for the midnight snack menu at some point, but it’s a little out of the way for this Montrose resident. =)

spicy sichuan is my favorite restaurant. Every dish is very special, I go to every
favorite dish is Fresh Fish Fillet In Spicy Sauce.

Spicy Sichuan was my first and only Chinese restaurant that I know when I moved to Houston many years ago. It has the most awesome chow mein in town. The food was indeed spicy. The fish was fresh and tasty. I used to come here so often before a nearby Sichuan restaurant opened.
During my recent visits, I noticed that the food lost its luster. Unlike Mala Sichuan, the taste became very standard — salty and spicy on every dish I ordered. Not sure what changed their shine.
On my last visit, I didn’t see anything interesting on the menu. The waitress recommended some items on the dry-​erase board. But I had trouble understanding the actual ingredients. I asked about what was in the «stewed beef ball in stone bowl». She said there were beef balls and vegetables, but didn’t tell me about the degree of spiciness. So, I ordered a mixed-​vegetable dish from the late night menu. When I got home, I couldn’t taste the difference, one dish has meatballs with full of red oil and the other one has braised vegetables in red oil.
Because the sauce still had plenty of flavors, I was able to make another dish by adding some stirred fried vegetables and pork slices.

As part of a birthday celebration for my auntie (not by relation, but by choice), we ventured out to Spicy Sichuan on a dreary Monday night. The restaurant only had a few parties and the cold dish buffet table looked lonely and sad.
We were promptly seated and my parents launched into a debate over what dishes they wanted to get. We got the traditional mala pepper covered fish, pigs blood and intestines served boiling hot in cast iron pot with a chafing candle underneat, fantastic fried tofu with vegetables, and some other vegetables that I have no idea what the English name is.
Unfortunately, I can’t help too much with the names of the dishes, but I can comment on the overall experience and flavor of the dishes. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the dishes weren’t just mindnumbingly hot, but they actually had flavor behind the punch. The non-​spicy dishes were as good or better than the spicy dishes.
The pigs blood and intestine was cooked perfectly. The dish could have used a couple extra notches of spice, but the intestines were the perfect texture and had fantastic flavor! There was no gamey/​dirty bits here. The boiling hot pot provided a great spectacle, but the food being temperature hot helped all the flavor come out of the dish. I’ve always thought pigs blood tasted like agar or no flavor jello, but it has a very subtle nuance that came out with the excess heat applied.
The standard offering of mala covered fish came out and it tasted phenomenal. I accidentally chewed on a few peppers and my entire mouth became numb. Water tasted salty. The fish tasted sweet. It was trippy, but definitely fun!
One thing my parents really liked about the restaurant was how hot (temperature) all the food was. How it seemed like everything was really, really fresh and they cooked it at really high temperature to get the right tastes into the food.
The waitstaff spoke mostly Mandarin, but there was one woman who spoke Cantonese there. My parents asked for recommendations from the Cantonese server and she seemed to genuinely care about their preferences before recommending anything. She asked what they were going to order and tried to help fill in the gap. Overall, we had a great experience and the food was delicious. If you’re only looking to get your tastebuds numbed, this is not the place to go. If you’re looking for flavor-​packed dishes served piping hot, you’ve come to the right place.

I had cold appetizers and a hot pot. Fish is not bad, however, it is fishy. Shall let it sit and let the spices soak in to cover that fishy taste. Lamb is great. Beef and pork are not processed with oil or something. It shall be served as fresh cuts with no process, as the way the lamb served. They charge for the sauce. The portion for the appetizer is little. The taste is not bad however it not worth $ 7 for that portion. I had better and costs less at NY. It cannot be compared with the best Sichuan restaurant, however, it is better than Sichuan King.

So much potential, but such poor execution…
This place has a super authentic menu of traditional Sichuan dishes that will make any foodie scream for joy. Unfortunately, their tastes aren’t as authentic.
First, their cold appetizers come from their buffet stand, where the food has probably been sitting out for a while. Some of my beef tasted hard and dry at parts, which is totally unacceptable.
A restaurant’s first priority should always be to supply their patrons with fresh food, everything else can be an after thought.
Their entrees aren’t bad, especially their fried crab. However, if you’re looking for usual numbing experience (known as ‘mala’) you’re used to from Sichuan restaurants, you will be sorely disappointed.
This is the first Sichuan restaurant I’ve been to where I didn’t walk out sweating from all the spiciness of the food.
Also, they charged $ 2 for tea. This should be a taboo at any and all Asian restaurants.
Good luck guys, because you’ll need it.

I came to Spicy Sichuan on a Sunday evening when I was craving some Asian food. After driving around for a while, we stumbled onto this place that seemed a bit unwelcoming. The windows seemed to be covered and that was a little intimidating from the outside.
Like the good foreigners that we are, we decided to try it out and just go at it. When you walk inside, there is a board with Chinese writing and I’m assuming that it was the specials they were currently offering.
The décor isn’t the best and there was a little buffet style counter that we didn’t dare to venture into. Also, there’s an aquariaum that has fish you can order and they’ll cook it for you. Pretty darn fresh.
We ordered these flat dumplings that came with a sauce at the bottom. I’m not sure what the name of the dumplings were but I didn’t like the after taste they had. Another dish I got was the Dan Dan noodles and those were pretty darn good. I called it «Chinese spaghetti». The last dish we got was the Kung Pao chicken and it was just OK, nothing worth mentioning there.
If I would go with someone that actually knew what was what or what items are good, then I think I could have a better time at this place.

I have a coworker from sichuan that recommended this place as well as some specific dishes — the house style tofu and their spicy steamed fish — and I came to like their ants crawling on a hill… and they were really quite good at first but not so much our last visit.
Thier spicy stuff do seem to be very tasty as leftovers, but something about the actual in-​restaurant experience sometimes goes awry.

So my friend took me here for the first time. He is Caucasian but knows how to speak Mandarin. I’m Vietnamese and do not speak Chinese at all. I loved how the waitress immediately looked at me and started speaking to me in Chinese. I looked at her clueless. My friend started speaking to her in Chinese and ordered for us. She was definitely surprised to hear a white man speak fluent Chinese so then she looks at me again and tells me in Chinese that he speaks really good Chinese. I looked at her clueless again and my friend translated for me. It was kind of awkward actually but hilarious at the same time.
Dude, this place is called SPICY Sichuan for a reason. We had a tofu dish that was spicy as hell! He wasn’t kidding when he said he likes spicy food. My mouth was on fire, my nose was running, and I was sweating! So much for a casual lunch… The food tasted good regardless but I couldn’t handle the heat.

Strange restaurant, confusing methods on ordering.
Apparently there is a hot dish order (The menu) and a cold dish order (The buffet style line). While both are decent, none of it really stood out.
The cold meat line has the traditional Sesame oil marinated with peppers applied over cold cuts (Also called mala). Taste is on par with most restaurants of the same region, but I never did understood their method of pricing here (And I speak Chinese).
Over all this was one strange experience, not wanting to argue I just paid and got out the door. So this is a authentic Sichuan style restaurant, but good luck on getting your orders in.

$ 17 per person all-​you-​can-​eat hot pot! A reasonably good deal for reasonably good food.
Choose hot pot soup base from mild, spicy and half/​half.
Meats: beef, lamb.
Veggies: Don’t remember. Not too much variety. Not super important.
Others: Pig Blood (Definitely not a veggie but not sure if it really fits under meat)
The flavor of the soup base is pretty decent but not as good as Little Sheep Mongolian Hotpot. I enjoyed the spicy side and despite its large amount of oil. The non-​spicy side was nothing to write home about.
The meats appeared to be freshly-​sliced to the perfect thinness to be cooked almost-​immediately after dipping into the boiling soup base. However, they came two plates at a time and the servers were (intentionally?) slow bringing more. This is to be expected and really understandable. However, this is pretty much the only reason this review is 3 stars instead of 4.
One annoying thing was the $ 1.50 dipping sauce (sa-​cha, spicy garlic, etc.) and the portion was super small for the sauce.
Otherwise, it made for a super satisfying dinner on a cold-​ish night in Houston.
No clue how their other dishes tasted but I’d be willing to come back and try new stuff or have hot pot again.
Overall: Chill atmosphere and reasonably good food for all-​you-​can-​eat hotpot. A little slow on the meat refills but otherwise quite enjoyable.

Spicy and greasy foods. Lots of chili peppers, garlic, ginger, and other spices & herbs. Typical Sichuan cuisine it is!
Out of a couple of entrees that I have tried, the fried fish in broad bean chili paste tastes pretty good; don’t be fooled by how it looks though! it definitely looks like super spicy because the entire dish is covered in minced chili pepper, and soaked in red chili oil! But, it is in fact not really that spicy! Another entrée that I’ve enjoyed is the dried tofu stir-​fried with shredded jalapeño, which looks and tastes interesting as everything on the plate is julienned into long, thin strips like matchsticks, and the jalapeño is not spicy at all!
I would recommend this place to those of you who love spicy Chinese foods because the foods here are authentic, at reasonable prices!

As is custom, BYOB is offered here, and like all Asian joints, Spicy Sichuan is better for it. I would urge you to give this joint a shot, though this was my only spicy food fix during a recent trip to Houston. Perhaps there are other choices around the Chinatown area that would be another’s first choice. As for me, I was OK with SS.
The layout is a little cramped, and with 3 big tables on the edge of the restaurant, it makes navigating around the center pretty inconvenient. Luckily, you are coming here for food, not friends. Well, friends too… but not the ambiance.
If I were to urge you to order one specific item of Asian fare, I would direct you toward the Mapo tofu. This spicy, sloppy mass consists of some hefty spicing, minced pork, and an abundance of tofu… all sitting in a ridiculous amount of bright red sauce that essentially makes up the «mapo» style.
Of course you get rice here, but they also do a nice system of ordering at the counter, one that appears to offer up some of the typical Asian small plates. I don’t know what their intention is here, but perhaps it makes the flow better? Don’t ask me.
I saw that this eatery opens at 7AM for breakfast. That is ridiculous. Who would want to ruin their gastrointestinal tract in the wee hours of the morning? Well, to each their own. I would actually love to get my day started with some mean, gut-​wrenching foodstuffs from the Far East.

We got all-​you-​can-​eat hot pot for about $ 20. It was pretty good! They keep bringing out meat like lamb, beef, prawn, pig stomach, blood tofu, and some other stuff. The vegetables are kind of limited, though. I wish they had more greens. The sauce had two hot sauces: a hot sauce and bland sauce. The hot sauce was awesome and definitely had me burning.

Got here about 10:00 pm on a Saturday night, there was only one table beside us and they were leaving. They close at Midnight tonight. A pretty noticeable smell as you walk in the door, wasn’t really bad but was an «acquired tasted» if you will.
If you are 100% Americanized and are squimish and are not an adventurous eater then here might not be the place for you. As we sat down we could see on the other table colugated blood cake, pig ears, intestines and such. On the menu they had rabbit. Saw hot pot for only $ 16 and started to get excited until I was told they did not have a beef/​chicken/​pork/​vegetable only hot pot so scratch that.
Waitress and owner were very very nice and helpful. Kind of hard to understand them and at the same time they had a hard time understanding me but because of the attitude expressed on wanting to help me and answer my questions like «What is mountain tofu?» «What is Pocket tofu?», yes, there are many items on the menu that did not really have a caption explanation on the bottom nor any pictures.
This is NOT your Americanized Asian food I could pretty much tell but for hardcore Asian (Szechuan?) food the element was there, you will not see any of our «south of the border» friends back there cooking nor even busting a table. Nothing wrong with that but whenever you see an ALL Asian crew the you can pretty much be assured your most likely getting the real thing.
The food, ordered the «Onion Cake», fluffy, not salty, not bland. $ 1.95 cut into 4 pieces.
The spicy chicken, we thought this was going to be your run of the mill chicken wing and spicy onion, shallots, garlic sauteed mix on top but boy were we wrong. Little cuts of chicken with probably around 30% of the plate cooked with cut up red peppers. I mean conservatively I could say that it was hard picking out the tid bits of chicken without having one of those little dark red peppers clinging to the fork. But you know what? That dish had a very addictive flavor even if it might be a little too much on the spicy side for young pallets. This dish is definitely one to order, just wish they could find a way to filter out some of those peppers, it’s kind of tedious food work like picking crab out of a shell. $ 7.99
Appetizer dumplings, the menu says 10 for like $ 3.99 or was it $ 4.99? Did not seem like 10 but you still get enough for your money’s worth. I was thinking we were going to get those semi firm steamed dumplings, wrong, had the consistency of steamed rice cake filled with pork. Was it good? Oh you bet it was, whatever sauce it was resting in with some crunchy tidbits that I could not decipher complimented it.
Mixed house fried rice, did not seem appetizing when it first came out. Not a semi dark color like it was fried in a wok and like one is used to seeing at a Chinatown restaurant but it was not bad. In fact flavorful, did not really have to add soy sauce. Had slithers of some kind of fish in there, chicken, pork, egg, no bean sprouts and of course your spread of onions. $ 7.99, it was ok, not bad.
Iced tea, fresh and strong. Did not taste like somebody brewed their sweaty sock in it or like some places that don’t wash out their aluminum container, you reading this workers/​owners of Phở 24? Riding on the strong side too but did not cross over.
The negatives: Had a mosquito in my water, it’s ok, I don’t mind a little buzz but that’s not what I meant. Showed the owner, briskly gave me another water, sincere about what happened, it’s ok lady, probably fell off the tip of my nose or something.
Bathroom, smelled like booty, needed TLC and the big thing, NO FREAKING PAPER TOWELS, had to open nasty door with both elbows hoping nobody was going to open the door from the other side and smack me in the face.
Freaking Vinegar and Soy Sauce glass bottles. Most if not all Asian places fill their vinegar bottles that had the green cap and the red is usually for the soy sauce right? Not here, my son tried to put a little of this «red cap» soy sauce only to be stunned to the flash of bitter beer face emotion of vinegar in his fried rice.
Just 3 little details but other than that a positive experience, what really helps is the attitude of everybody there. I could tell out of the corner of my eyes they were watching the reaction of each and every dish we tried and felt bad that we could not feign any mouthgasms but thank you very much for trying.
Bill $ 32 dollars for Hot Tea, Appetizer Dumplings, Combo Fried Rice, Spicy Chicken, Iced Tea and Onion Tart plus $ 7 tip for the good service. Your not going to break your wallet here, thank you and please come again, oh yes I will some day.

Despite some of the bad reviews I gave this place a try because my colleague said her friend really liked it.
I am glad that I did because the food was pretty good. I wouldn’t say it’s the best Sichuan food in town but they had some really good dishes there. I love their appetizers (especially the bamboo shoots) and whole fish dishes. Simple stir-​fried vegetables are always good here too.
One thing is that don’t go for the boiled fish fillets in hot sauce (or something like that). I tried it and it was pretty bad. I also didn’t like the bacon in garlic sauce here either. However, some of the dishes are just so good that I could overlook a couple flaws. No need to be perfectionist freak or sth, right?

Spectacularly super spicy sustenance.
Came here the other night with 10 others and paid $ 7 per person total — WIN! It’s tricky though because like Alexander T. mentioned, «you fill up quickly because you have to eat up so much rice and drink so much water to prevent death.»
Food recommendations:
–The «house special fried chicken» is a crowd pleaser — think asian Chickfila in a sea of red peppers
–The dumplings are still spicy but come in a sweeter sauce
–I love their spicy eggplant in garlic sauce; sometimes I get a little crazy change it up with the eggplant/​tofu/​green bean combo plate

Probably the most authentic Chinese restaurant we have visited since arriving back in the US two years ago. My wife is now slapping me around asking why we don’t live in Houston.
Loads of choices. You can order a tableful of dishes and they are all stacked cattywampus to serve everyone at your table family style. Yup, just like China only no table-​sized lazy susan.
I ate some spicy clear noodles and spicy fried chicken. I was pleased to discover the spicy fried chicken (yup super spicy!) was NOT authentic Chinese style «chainsaw chicken» with all the bones left in to be deposited on the table after gnawing off the meat. That’s one authenticity I DO NOT miss.
Shared a plate of Chinese spinach. Another score. Tasted like what we ate in China. I’d like to put some of THAT in my new Vitamix personally.
My wife was in heaven gobbling up my dishes ordered, as well as her orders of tripe and whatever other delicacies she’d been missing.
Hot Pot is also available on a portable burner. A neighboring table was chowing on that. So keep that in mind.
Would we return? Yes but probably only after The Goddess of Noodles has tried every other restaurant in the area. There is in fact another SIchuan joint in that very shopping center.

We went on a Friday night as the place was pretty busy. Our group of 5 had to camp out at a small table until a larger table became available.
Our group ordered the hot fish, the chili chicken, and a green bean dish. My friend got some appetizers for the table (you have to go up to a counter to order those). The appetizers we got were served cold. The more notable items were spicy beef (which was good) and pig’s ears (which I have tried in the past but honestly are not a favorite of mine)
The hot fish was swimming in chili flakes and it was pretty spicy but not unbearably so. One of the best versions of this dish I’ve tried. The chili chicken was a disappointment. It turned into a game of finding the few pieces of over-​fried dried chicken amongst the s***pile of chili peppers in the dish. The green beans were really good.
The chili chicken made me sad but given the price and the speed of service I think 3 stars is fair. I thought Spicy Sichuan was a solid place overall, but still leaves me searching for a better option.