Eats - Chinese - Szechuan (Sichuan)

Little Sichuan Restaurant
168 E. 4th Ave., San Mateo, CA 94402
650-345-9168
M: closed, Tu-Th: 11:30 a.m.-9:30 p.m., F-Sa: 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m., Su: 11:30 a.m.-9:30 p.m.
Overall: ***
Good for a quick lunch for twelve. The food is good, although not fancy. Hunan lamb is nicely done, and is pretty much all I ever order here. Very inexpensive and hugely popular at lunch.

Update 05/02: Huge improvements have been made to the food (new chef?). This is now one of my favorite places to come, and prices have remained insanely reasonable—$40 for a huge lunch for three. Check it out if you haven't been there for a few months. Be warned that they don't spare the chilies in spicy dishes. Bon Bon Chicken, which isn't made with peanut butter in their version, is vindaloo-level fiery if you order it "spicy."

House of Sichuan / House of Macau Restaurant
20007 Stevens Creek Blvd. (between Wolfe and De Anza)
Cupertino, CA 95014
408/255-3328
Mon-Thu: 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m., 5 p.m.-9:30 p.m.
Fri: 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m., 5 p.m.-10:00 p.m.
Sat: 11:30 a.m.–3:00 p.m., 5 p.m.-10:00 p.m.
Sun: 11:30 a.m.–3:00 p.m., 5 p.m.-9:30 p.m.
Overall: ****
Went here with my friend Pat (my usual lunch companion on Saturdays, mostly because he's adventurous). I found out about this place from Ed K., a visitor to this site who sent me a recommendation, and I followed his advice with very good results. We started with spicy sliced cold tendon which turned out to be tongue-searingly spicy, so much so that we had to wait for rice to arrive before eating it. When I say spicy, I mean that our plates were bright orange from all of the chili oil from just two pieces. I always like cold tendon with hot rice anyway, because the texture becomes silky smooth. We also had wontons in spicy oil, which showed up a bit late. These were more mellow and had an mysterious sweetness. For entrees we had Sichuan twice cooked pork. There are two options, lean and fatty, and as recommended we had the fatty. It was the best version of this I've had of this dish, which at other restaurants tends to be dry. We also had the Sichuan-style intestine hot pot, which I know as chang wang. This version had a good mix of chitterlings and huge blocks of congealed pig blood. Very nice. Service was excellent, and they said the Chinese name of each dish as it arrived. One note: on winter days, sitting next to the windows in the front can result in heatstroke unless it's a cloudy day. 12/03

04/04 UPDATE: Went back for lunch with two friends. They've added a Cantonese chef, so there are two separate menus now. It's a very nice range of dishes, although the Szechuan dishes are far more interesteing. Had green beans (simply done with a sprinkling of unidentified dark pickles bits), twice cooked pork (fatty), seafood chow fun, and Szechuan intestine hot pot. Not a lot of intestine in the hot pot this time.

05/15/04 UPDATE: Went for lunch. I think they're starting to remember our little group. We decided to try some new dishes: soup with fish maw and crab, Beijing-style spareribs, frog with garlic and leeks, and a big plate of spinach with garlic. The soup was made with real crab and was fantastic. We ate the entire tureen. The Beijing spareribs were sliced across the bone, so were more like small porkchops with a sweet glaze (they use good spices). The frog was disappointing. Somehow, I imagine something closer to frog's legs, but this was an ENTIRE frog chopped into tiny pieces with sharp bones. The cooked whole garlic cloves were nice though. Spinach was good. I like having something slightly bitter when eating sweetish food. $52 with tip.

09/26/04 UPDATE: This restaurant keeps morphing. Now it serves Szechaun, Cantonese, and Macau food, plus dimsum. So we had to try it. After showing up last week and facing a huge line (Moon Festival crowd), we came back to find things back to their normal pace. The dimsum is mostly ordered via a checklist with just a couple of carts and the occasional platter. We ordered Szechuan-style intestines, sesame bread, shrimp in green onion oil, chengdu noodles, smoked Shanghai fish, and siu mai.

We actually received Szechuan-style kidney and uterus instead of intestines, and no fish. I loved the kidneys though (they didn't have the "organ meat" taste of other kidneys I've had), so we didn't complain. The uterus was also good, although I don't particularly care for that texture. The shrimp in green onion oil was interesting—bright, smallish boiled shrimp with a strongly-flavored oil. The chengdu noodles were delicious wheat noodles topped with shredded cucumbe and ground meat of some kind, in a spicy sauce with a touch of peanut butter and sesame oil. My friend really liked these. The siu mai were okay. The smoked fish also never arrived. The "sesame bread" was actually similar to jian doi but flattened and the mochi tinted orange (from chestnuts?). Anyway, these are delicious when hot.

Panda Country Kitchen
4737 Geary St.
San Francisco, CA 94118
415/221-4278
Rating: ****
We went here mostly because of the odd name, and the line of people that regularly shows up outside on weekends. We went for lunch to avoid the crowds, and ordered Beef Shank and Beef Tendon (mispelled as "tender" on the menu), chang wang (the chitterlings in a spicy sauce with pork blood, tofu, and preserved vegetables), shrimp with sing qua, and twice cooked pork. The beef and tendon were very nice, and came in a spicy/hot sauce that made my boyfriend choke a bit; I'd tap off some of the sauce if you're eating it without rice like we were. The chang wang was very good, I thought, with lots of chitterlings and no "dog smell" aroma. The sing qua with shrimp used tiny shrimp (like cocktail shrimp; isn't that a Shanghai thing?) but was still very nicely cooked, not mushy and delicately seasoned. The twice cooked pork was also very good, although I think they pulled back on the hot sauce to suit our taste. I confused the waitor when I said that I wanted the fatty kind of pork, because some restaurants Americanize this dish and only serve it with lean pork, which basically ruins it and makes it too tough.

The menu is nicely varied, and the most expensive dish is something called "Panda Country Bear Feet" which we're very curious about. Service was good, although we were the last people after lunch, so the wait staff started eating lunch at the end of our meal. The restaurant itself is pleasant, with nice chairs, and traditional art on the walls. Total was about $38 before tip. Dec 3, 2006

Update: June 2007 This is now my de facto favorite Szechuan-style restaurant, so we're here at least once a month. They finally updated their menu so that Chinese-style dishes are listed on the English menu, instead of just posted on the walls with photos. Interestingly, the photos appear to be from a Wei Chuan cookbook (a well-known cooking school in Taiwan). If you aren't sure, but are willing to experiment (and pay for the dish even if you hate it), then by all means order from the photos, which is what we had to do to have a spicy dish I know as chang wang.

Keep in mind that my tastes are not everyone's. The dishes here can be VERY chili hot and I'm talking Southern Indian hot. Eat carefully. On a muggy day, however, you'll understand why they do it. I really like the sin qua with shrimp, although they prepare it differently (with dried shrimp vs. fresh) for Chinese people we noticed.

Z and Y Restaurant
655 Jackson St.
San Francisco, CA 94133
415/816-1015
Rating: **
We went here two years ago during the Chinese New Year parade, and returned while showing my boyfriend's niece Gail around Chinatown. This is a really, really non-descript place off the main drag and very easy to miss. We ate almost an entirely vegetarian meal, except for deep fried chitterlings (spectacular and disappointing, but more like a braised dish) and beef and broccoli (ordered by the 10 year old with us). We also had eggplant (very good), bamboo shoots with numbing spice, and some other dishes which I've forgotten. This is a nice place run by nice people, but it's not fancy at all. They have some really strange dishes, but they steered us away from some of them. Big dinner for five was $69.05 before tax. Service is decent, considering the waitress was by herself. March 9, 2008