Sichuanese Cuisine Restaurant, Plus Funfetti Cake

We had to make up for all the past years when never celebrated Kyle's birthday (the downside of having a birthday right in the middle of spring break), so Shu organized a birthday dinner at Sichuanese Cuisine Restaurant in the International District. The guys gave rave reviews from their last experience there... so how could we not go? :)

The staff was friendly, especially once Shu started speaking in fluent Mandarin. While the restaurant wasn't large, it still managed to seat the 9 of us without too long of a wait. We decided to do family-style, with each of us ordering a dish. Best idea ever! You really have to go the "everyone sharing food" route at Chinese restaurants. Or else, you just get stuck eating pepper chicken or garlic eggplant for the whole meal, all by yourself. This way we all got to try the full repetoire of the menu.

Some of the standouts:

• Steamed Fish, while not a whole, fresh fish, it was delicious! Or I just may be partial, because I love seafood and don't get to eat it very often.
• Even eggplant haters seemed to find the Garlic Eggplant quite palatable. Although, anything covered in a thick soy sauce is probably good. Another vegetable dish, the Green Beans, was also very good. Delicious, but not the best I've had.
• Spicy Boiled Fish was not as spicy as it looked. The soup was bright red with dried chili peppers floating. You had to "fish" for chunks of fish and napa cabbage. For true "spicy fish" lovers, the dish probably isn't spicy enough, but it was good for wimps like me!

The other dishes we ordered included pepper chicken (fried chunks of chicken covered in pepper), ma po tofu, mongolian beef, and green onion pancakes. The dishes definitely hit the spot in terms of comfort food. Everything smelled and tasted great, and I really don't think we went wrong in any of the dishes we ordered. However, there is a line between "good" and "truly special."

The pepper chicken was a bit of a letdown, especially in comparison to Utopia's version. In retrospect, I can't pinpoint exactly what I didn't like, but it just wasn't as addictive as pepper chicken can be. Maybe the ratio of fried batter to chicken was off. It did seem like the chicken pieces were smaller, and hence too much fried coating, so each bite was too oily and too much friedness (I just made this word up). Also, there wasn't variety in terms of taste between dishes. Even though we ordered some fish, some chicken, some vegetables... every dish almost had the same taste. Lots of soy sauce, probably MSG, and mucho oil. That probably sums up Chinese cooking in general. Lastly, all of the dishes on the menu you can probably find at every other Chinese or Sichuanese restaurant. There wasn't anything particularly special to THIS Chinese restaurant. And while I did list the standouts (in my humble, probably non-authentic ABC opinion), I can't say that there was one dish that was truly amazing and out-of-this-world.

Overall, Sichuanese Cuisine Restaurant served delicious comfort food, however, falls quite short of amazingness. One last note, the prices were also typical, not overly expensive, everything ranging from $8-$15 per dish.

I bumped up the rating to 3.5 stars, due to the service. The people running the restaurant were very nice, especially with a large group of us! They refilled our waters (and rice), and split our check 9 ways.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

And what is a birthday without cake?! The birthday boy requested... funfetti, so funfetti he got! While I personally think funfetti is a kids' birthday cake, I guess some people never outgrow it! Before, I had derided funfetti as "bland vanilla cake with sprinkles inside." Plus, it's "made out of a box!" The horror! Yet, somehow Kyle's Funfetti Cake with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting tasted delicious! I stand corrected.

Happy Birthday, Kyle!