Szechwan Food Chinese Restaurant
22 Pacific Highway
St Leonards, NSW 2065
$$$–

A few nights ago, I noticed a new restaurant had opened across the road from where I live – Szechwan Food Chinese Restaurant. It looked like it was ripping off Szechuan Gardens (yes, spelled differently) on the other side of the road yet had many tables filled with people, so I was keen to check it out. The inside of the restaurant is bright and cheery with funky wooden chairs and tables. It seems that it’s some-what trying to be a fine-dining restaurant (with it’s higher-than-normal prices), yet still being a hole-in-the-wall type restaurant with faux, instead of fresh, flowers and a box of tissues. I honestly thought the place would be a lot cheaper – the dishes are priced at around $18-20 each.

Our lady waitress was incredibly helpful, attentive and sweet. Chris kept repeating how lovely she was, and he never really notices stuff like that! They seemed family-owned and so she would’ve been the mum – and we did feel like she was our mum when she recommended food and kept us happy throughout the evening 😛 One unfortunate thing though – food took over 45mins to arrive. Considering we arrived at 8:30pm and the food didn’t arrive ’til 9:15pm, that makes for a VERY late dinner and 2 quite unhappy people.

One bite, however, and we were sold.

We ordered the Peking Pancake with Beef, which came larger than I’d expected (it was under Entrees/Appetisers). It had a layer of pastry, a layer of beef and sweet onions, then another layer of pastry, then beef/onions, and so on, about 3-4 times. As you can imagine, that made the pancake quite substantial, meaty, and filling. It was lovely!! The filling had a nice mild taste and was moist, whilst the outside pastry was fried crispy. No dipping sauce, I’d asked, you just eat it plain. Chris thought it might go well with some chilli sauce, but I liked it au naturale to savor the true taste of the beef.

Also decided on the Braised Pork in Foil, which the lady recommended. A traditional Szechuan dish, it was deboned at our table and had beautiful chunky pork lolling in a slightly-sticky black gravy. The gravy was slightly spicy, which I enjoyed, though the pork wasn’t as utterly soft as Szechuan Garden’s version. It was still really soft and fell apart though, and was the perfect accompaniment with the Steamed Buns (we initially ordered rice but she recommended we swap to these buns instead). The buns were mind-bogglingly delicate and soft and fluffy, mopping up the gravy to eat with the pork. So delish!

Just when we thought we were done, the lady came out again with 2 bowls of “complimentary!” Sago with Coconut Milk. It was beautiful, delicate on the palette, lightly chilled, and a lovely way to end a filling carnivorous meal. When we got the bill, we were shocked to see that it was only $34, with no opportunity to tip (when asked if we could, the cashier said “Huh???”). For everything that we had, it turns out that it wasn’t so expensive after all. We’ll be back 🙂

Szechwan Food Chinese Restaurant

Waiting 45mins for our food renders us silly with boredom

Hee hee!

Complimentary Chinese tea

Peking Pancake with Beef

Braised Pork in Foil

De-boned

Lovely fluffy steamed buns

Sago with Coconut Milk

Ate so quickly that I bit my lip HARD. Not once, but TWICE!!!!
Bled everywhere, this pic was taken only when it stopped bleeding 🙁

NOT HAPPY!!! *ouch*