四季川菜馆

Everything I've gotten here is on par with the best Szechuan food I've had elsewhere, including Chinatown. I love the double-cooked pork. Today, I thought I'd ordered a lunch special but failed to actually complete my order in time. So I changed course and ordered a dan dan noodle to go. It completely went off with delicious, herbacious, numbing, savory, and spicy flavors. Thanksfully I had some black vinegar at home that paired with it perfectly. I hope the neighborhood continues to support this special that brings us big, bold flavors in an unpretentious, affordable package. One thing to watch out for - the "stir-fried" beef is actually deep fried beef, and sweet. Which I typically love, but it's not the numbing spice flavor I was looking forward to. Still very good, though, well-made.

Going to keep rolling my eyes every time I see an Eater food critic rave about “best mapo tofu” they recently discovered at Breeze. Don’t get me wrong I’m not a Breeze hater, but mapo tofu here is where it’s at. In fact any staple chinese dish you name: Stir fried string beans, double cooked pork, cabbage casserole, mei cai braised pork belly, I’ve tried them all here and they are all at the level of what I’d expect to get from a halfway decent restaurant in China, with good, varied spices and that signature wok hay. It will be pungent, in your face, sometimes more seasoned or oily than you’d like, but so is a lot of Chinese food when you eat out for hunan/sichuan food, known as “下饭菜” (dishes that accompany the rice). Order a veggie dish as a side for balance! Have not tried the dim sum or American Chinese food here so will not comment, but those are not the reasons I go to this restaurant anyway. Just happy to have this gem of a restaurant/chef in the neighborhood, which had so few options (especially at the price point) before.

I ordered the beef short rib noodle soup, not knowing it is huge! No problem! The beef was tasty and melted in my mouth! Wonderful! The twice cooked pork was delicious, but I couldn’t eat much of it as the soup filled me up! Not to worry, I’ll enjoy it tomorrow. Very good dinner!

I ordered soup dumplings and beef and broccoli. The soup dumplings were ok. Not super soupy. And the beef and broccoli was crazy greasy! Decent taste but not fast.

I ordered the shredded beef with scallion and white rice lunch special, plus an extra serving of rice, as Chinese spots tend to give you so much meat and not enough veggies/rice to balance it out. Well… it felt like I had ordered onions with a bit of beef and a pinch of scallions lol. The onions were a tasty addition but the ratio neeeds to be adjusted! If I were someone who didn’t like onions I would’ve been livid about my meal as the menu didn’t even say it came with onions. Overall the food was good enough. And they never gave me the $2 extra white rice (nor the water that was supposed to come with the special) but I didn’t need it anyway, all I had leftover were a few bits of onion 🙃 The scallion pancakes were very good! Maybe could’ve had more scallion as well but overall I was satisfied. I really didn’t want to give three stars, but my main meal just wasn’t what was advertised on the menu. I will return to try again and hope I can improve my rating! Overall it’s a cute clean place with kind employees. And their bubble tea is really good!