Little Szechuan

This would be my third trip to this particular establishment. Those previous being recorded by my esteemed collegue JMJ.

There is not much left to be said about the place past those first few words. Even when there are few customers in their well decorated eating area the service is incredibly inept. They clearly have had no training or have no desire to actually serve the customers outside of purveying the food and subsequently the bill. It is difficult to rouse their attention for simple needs through the course of the meal, and they don't even give you a cursory glance to see if it is to your liking.

In fact, the best service we got at the place was from the mexican busboy who brought us water and tea. He was at least friendly. (He even called us "amigo," although that did ruin the chinese restaurant feel...)

At least the waitress spoke english.

Oh well.

As for the food, what they actually had in stock was quite good. (I had ordered three things before one of them was available...) I was served Chairman Mao Pork, which is mostly pigfat with little bits of meat attached. It was like eating some sort of pork jello.

Delicious.

It is unfortunate that such great food comes from a place that has such a poor staff.

Next time this happens we're killing one of the goldfish.

Shuang Cheng

It was like a crappy diner, only Chinese food. You know what I mean, ugly plaster walls and uninspired decoration, generic chairs and paper placemats that you can buy in bulk from a generic restaurant supply store.

That said, I can still taste the ginger sauced dungeness crab I ate the other night. The fried rice dish was excellent as well, but that crab may have been one of, if not the, greatest things I have ever eaten. The dragon who accompanied me to dinner explained, in his language as beautiful as it is incomprehensible to human ears, that Shuang Cheng was known for seafood dishes and I very much believe it.

The menu offered a variety of dishes, but for the most part it was standard Chinese restaurant fair. It did offer a better meat selection than some (mainly in that it had real duck in the dishes if you wanted it), and had a much larger seafood menu than many Chinese places. Which makes sense if you read the paragraph above this one.

Service was surprisingly prompt (if a little rushed) considering that the place was packed to the brim with people. Nothing really good or bad to say about it. It was nice that they offered free tea along with the water.

Ultimately, Shuang Cheng adds another unexpected yet excellent Asian food-hole to the big list of such things to be found in the area.

Little Szechuan (2nd visit)

Went back to Little Szechuan, this time on a Thursday evening. There were still doing decent business but were not overly busy.

If you remember in my last write-up, service on a Friday night was absolutely awful. It was so awful in fact that I was considering not going back.

The food brought me back. This visit was sweet and sour scallops and beer duck. Both were phenomenal in their own ways.

I am happy to report that besides being slow, which one is used to on University Avenue, the service was fine.

This does bring up some thoughts though. Little Szechaun clearly wants to be considered a nicer restaurant than the others on the road. This is evident in the space, lighting, uniformed serving staff, and a liquor license. The level of service simply does not meet the seemingly high aspirations this place has. It causes a bit of dissonance, if the service is going to be as such I'd rather it was in a plainer looking space.

I will go back though to enjoy the outstanding food, it will just be during the week.

Little Szechuan

University Avenue in St. Paul is home to some of the finest Asian restaurants in Minnesota (some may say the U.S.). Most of the restaurants on this strip are tiny holes-in-the-wall offering fantastic food and personal, somewhat quaint service.

Little Szechuan looks completely unremarkable from the outside, but on the inside one will find a reasonably nicely appointed space with new paint, tasteful decorations, and ample seating. I feel they did as much as they could with the space. The restaurant has a constant din, but no one had to raise their voice to speak at the table or order.

Service:

We went on a Friday evening without a reservation and were seated immediately. (Little Szechuan will only take reservations for groups of 6 or more). When we arrived the restaurant was about 2/3's full and continuing to fill. By the time we left every table was occupied with at least 2 dozen people waiting. Service was absolutely dismal, starting with an improperly dressed hostess who tried to seat our group of 5 at a 4 person table when there were empty 6 spot tables around (a floor manager righted this wrong). This segued into a confused serving team (we saw at least 5 different servers who apparently had not been communicating with one another). Servers were either not around enough or doing redundant tasks and also brought three wrong dishes to our table. The only good points about the service were the splitting of the bill at the end and the assistants who were excellent at keeping water glasses full.

Food:

The food was absolutely amazing. The soups we had (wonton, hot and sour, winter melon) were lovely, light starters. Fried wontons and crab cakes were best in class. Little Szechuan has two menus, the green one has more of the regular offerings that one will see at any local Chinese restaurant. The black menu is a bound, fully laminated 150 item plus menu with color photos of some of the items and a wide variety of exotic and spicy dishes. Our table had the stir fried fish fillet, squid hot pot, cumin lamb, stir fried beef entrails, duck with taro, pork with bamboo, and potato with green pepper. Every dish was fantastic, and the prices are very fair, the same price or less than other Chinese restaurants for much better food.

Summary and Miscellaneous information:

Little Szechuan has been receiving quite a bit of positive attention from the local press and by the end of the evening I got the feeling that they were not ready for business resulting from those reviews. The food was as good as expected from those reviews. The service was unfortunately poor enough to discourage future visits. Gunslinger and I have decided that it might be best to go for lunch during the week since there are many more menu items to try.

Parking did not seem to be a problem. The wine list was almost non-existent. When asked about a corkage policy, the server seemed confused and said something not quite coherent about how the restaurant did not want people bringing in their own wine due to liability.

We'll go again. I'll probably bring some of my own wine and just see what happens. We'll also try either a lunch or dinner during the week. Thinking about our experience, the poor service seemed to be largely due to poor floor management than the servers themselves.

Website: http://www.littleszechuan.com/