Little Szechuan

For some reason, I have rarely ever dined at Chinese restaurants.  Growing up, this makes sense - my dad won't touch Chinese food, so we'd never go as a family to the sole Chinese restaurant in town. But after that, I'm not really sure why.  For some reason, Chinese food is solidly a takeout or delivery only thing for me (other than dim sum).

Which brings me to this review: yup, delivery and takeout from a Chinese Restaurant, Little Szechuan.

Little Szechuan is located right on Broadway on the edge of North Beach, in the area that gets a bit more "interesting" at night.  It is a pretty generic seeming place, albeit with a very large menu.  The place itself is also quite large, multiple levels, including several banquet halls.  I haven't ever really heard people talk about it much, seemingly just always hovering above *** on Yelp, nothing particularly notable, but, its been around quite a while, so, clearly they have some fans.

I haven't ever dined in, but I have both picked up food in person there, and had it delivered.  I was always impressed with how well labelled everything was, and how friendly the staff were.  Above average in both regards.  Sometime, I'd like to actually dine in.

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• Door Dash ($15 off, $5 each of your first 3 orders) [ Delivery or pickup ]
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• Grub Hub ($10 off) [ Delivery or pickup ]
• Seamless ($10 off) [ Delivery or pickup ]
• Nextdish: ($10 off your first order) [ Delivery only ]
• Uber Eats ($20 off - use code eats-lejw5 at checkout) [ Pickup or delivery ]

Appetizers

The appetizer portion of the menu is extensive.  Every type of dumpling, pot sticker, wonton, buns, egg rolls, etc, along with things like salt & pepper calamari or tofu, bbq or roast duck, lettuce wraps, and chilled items like spicy beef tripe, cucumber saad, cold noodles, chicken feet, pork intestines, and so on.  Oh, and of course, all the soups and salads too.

If I was dining in, I'd definitely be interested in trying more appetizers, but our group opted for just one for our delivery order.

Fried Crab Rangoon.  $5.98 for 6.

Well, these just weren't very good, at all.  I thought crab rangoon was hard to mess up, but, sadly, they did.

It was very, very oily.  The filling inside was slightly sweet, cream cheese, and little bits of artificial crab.  Fairly fishy tasting, but biggest issue was how oily they were.

No one liked these.

*+.

Mains

The entree section of the menu was even more extensive.  19 pork dishes.  19 poultry dishes.  19 red meat.  23 seafood.  17 veggie dishes.  40 (!) noodles or fried rice items.  16 clay pots.  10 curries.  And so on.  So many choices.  Too many choices.

Kung Pao Chicken (less spicy). $8.98.

I have really fond memories of kung pao chicken, which, I realize is odd to say as someone who doesn't like chicken.  But when I was in college one of my professors had me over and we made kung pao chicken for dinner, my first time ever having it, and I loved the spice and the concept of having nuts in my stir fry.  It was all so new to me, and left a lasting impression.  From time to time, to this day, when I see kung pao I still try it, just to kinda remember the excitement of trying something new.

The chicken was tiny bits, breaded and fried.  Not bad really, and not too, uh, chicken-y.  Since it was ordered less spicy (not my choice), the sauce wasn't spicy ... at all.  Which definitely goes against my idea of what kung pao is supposed to be.  It was strange to have almost sweet, rather than spicy, kung pao.  Not the restaurant's fault, but, definitely different.

There was a generous amount of vegetables (zucchini and onions) and peanuts included, the vegetables were well sautéed and juicy.

Overall, a very good version, I just wish we'd been able to order it spicy.

***.

Szechuan Beef.  $9.98.

I was very excited for the Szechuan beef, particularly after the not spicy kung pao.  This was legit spicy, as you can see, full size spicy peppers right there in it.  The flavor was good, the veggies crisp, the meat not too chewy.

Solid execution. ***+.

[ No Photo ]

Mongolian Beef. $9.98. 

The Mongolian beef was another spicy offering.  I failed to get a photo, but there was about an equal ratio of pieces of beef to hot peppers!  This packed some serious heat.  The beef was fried, a bit chewy, but not bad.  My favorite element was the extremely flavorful, well sautéed onions.

My favorite of the dishes.  ***+.

Drinks

The drinks portion of the menu, also quite large.  In addition to your basic expected soft drinks, water, beer, wine, plum wine, sake, soy milk, etc, they have a range of fresh juices (6 choices, danger, danger, watermelon!), flavored ice teas (11 kinds), milk teas (14), smoothies (9), and trendy cremas (7), most of which can be customized to add in mix-ins.

Taro Smoothie. $3.98.

I really like taro.  I love the flavor, the starchiness.  I like real taro, particularly when mashed or turned into taro fries.  But even taro flavor from powders, mixed into bubble teas, can make me pretty happy.

So when I saw Little Szechuan had a "taro smoothie" I was intrigued.  They have a large list of milk teas, and taro isn't an option for the milk tea, so this seemed to be something different.  What was a taro smoothie?  I had no idea, but I had to order it.

I placed my order on delivery.com when I was a block or so away, walked in the door, and my drink was already being prepared.  Great service!

So, what is a taro smoothie?  I think it was real milk, blended with ice, and taro powder.  It was a bit too sweet for me, but the taro flavor was decent, and the ice was really nicely done, like a slushy.

I did want tapioca in it, but, Little Szechuan no longer offers tapioca.  They offered to mix in any of the jellies instead, and let me try both options.  One was sweet, multi-colored lychee jellies.  Since the drink was already a bit too sweet, I certainly didn't want to make it sweeter.  The other was the grass jelly, not sweet, and a larger side.  I'd consider adding those next time, as the smoothie sans boba was a bit boring, but really, I wanted boba.

I enjoyed my smoothie on a hot day, and it satisfied my curiosity, but, I don't think I'd get another, unless I brought my own tapioca.

***.

Taro Smoothie with Grass Jelly. $3.98.

Except, of course I craved another taro smoothie.  So I tried again, this time adding grass jelly.

I liked the smoothie itself, nicely blended, although I kinda wanted it a bit icier, more like a milkshake.  The taro flavor was stronger than the previous time.

The amount of grass jellies added was just right.  Enough to have some with most slurps, but not all.  The jellies are pretty flavorless, which is sorta what I wanted, as I didn't want more sweetness.  But they are very soft, which doesn't quite match what I wanted in my smoothie.

Really, I just wanted tapioca.  Not sure what I'd change next to make this work, besides begging them to offer boba again!

***.

Strawberry Green Iced Tea with Lychee Jelly. $2.98.

I recently attended a ball game at AT&T Park (company offsite), where I had a mango fruit tea with lychee jellies from Home Plate Boba.  It was perfectly refreshing on a hot day, and I was sorta craving another ever since.  About two days later, on another amazingly warm and sunny San Francisco fall day, I was about to get a taro tapioca bubble tea from Little Szechuan, when I saw that they also had fruity iced teas.  I'm not used to seeking these out, but figured it was worth a try.  It did match my mood better.

I had several choices for the iced tea base, either green or black tea based.  Since I didn't want too much caffeine, I opted for green tea.  My choices were jasmine (meh), honey lemon (not exciting), lychee (too sweet?), passion fruit (too finicky), or strawberry (just right!)

The menu didn't say it, but I also assumed it was ok to add any toppings in that they had available, so I asked for grass jelly, remembering it from when I tried it when I picked up my previous smoothie.  I expected the fruity tea to be sweet, and thought the less sweet jellies would be a nice match.

When my tea was handed over, it was clear that they used the lychee jellies instead of the grass jellies.  Oh well.  I didn't bother protest.

The tea was ... ok.  It was a bit bitter, in a way that seemed perhaps a little over-steeped.  But the real problem is that it didn't taste at all like strawberry.  You can see a tiny, tiny bit of strawberry in the bottom of the cup here, but I literally didn't taste anything fruity.  The strawberry is why I picked it!  It also wasn't sweet at all.  I am fine with unsweet tea, and I'm glad they seemed to use real strawberry instead of a sickly sweet syrup, but, it certainly isn't what I was expecting.

The lychee jellies were nice though, sweet, fun to suck up.

Overall, it was refreshing, just, not what I was hoping for.

The $2.98 price was fine, particularly since they didn't charge me for the jellies (normally $0.50).  I wouldn't get this again.

**+.