Anise

This place is now closed and this review is moot, but I thought I would chime in anyway. The food was excellent. Anise advertised and of course served «authentic» Chinese cuisine, not your typical homogenized Chinese-​American fare. They attempted raise the bar of their meals and usually succeeded. Of course every chef/​restaurant has their own take on a dish, so your preferences may tip the scales in the opposite direction. This was not the place you would go to if you were looking for some pork fried rice with fried chicken wings and some lobster sauce. That being said Anise failed as a restaurant because of their horrible service. The owner was always in a bad mood and seemed to be bothered that you showed up to eat.
If you are looking for some good authentic Chinese food I would suggest Sichuan Gourmet. They have 2 restaurants, one in Billerica, MA and the other in Framingham, MA. Their website has a full menu. They have two main sections to their menu. One with the unavoidable ‘American’ dishes and the other the authentic Chinese dishes. They do not alter the level of spiciness for the American palate, so respect the chili icons! I recommend the Fish Filets & Napa Cabbage w. Spicy Chili Sauce. The original mandarin for this dish () is deceptive, water boiled fish chunks sounds neither tasty nor spicy.

I thought I hated Chinese food, until I tried Anise. I went here a couple of weeks ago with a friend, who suggested we grab Chinese. Begrudgingly I went along, assuming we’d walk out with some wire-​handled carry-​out boxes filled with chicken fingers and friend rice. Instead, what we got, was pretty much a killer meal.
Sadly, the names of our meals escape me, since both were good enough to recommend. My friend ordered the fried chicken and chili dish that had the disclaimer «good choice,» which we took to be a good enough recommendation. Mine was a beef with chili and cabbage, which was dubbed a «traditional» choice on the menu — just my style.
My friend’s chicken was great. The texture was amazing and chicken was cooked perfectly. The beef, however, was out. Of. This. Friggin. World. It was so good that both of our eyes bugged out when we took a bite. It’s been almost two weeks since we had dinner there; I’m still dreaming about it.
The beef absolutely melted in your mouth. I continued eating long after I was full because I’ve never experienced meat that was so well-​cooked in my entire life.
Both meals were short on the vegetables, but well-​seasoned. They were spicy enough to need the white rice that came with them, but hardly lip-​burners.
Sadly, we walked into Anise so famished that we went right for the entrees — so no reviews of the appetizers. To make matters worse, we were in a bit of a rush, so we didn’t have time for dessert and drinks. We definitely didn’t give Anise the time it deserved; we’ll definitely be back some time soon.
Overall, Anise has remedied everything that usually makes me cringe when I walk into a Chinese restaurant: they have shorter, more directed menus; made clear what the chef’s specialties really are; and offered the authentic dishes on the English-​language menu.
My only complaint: They had a Bonnie Tyler and a Michael Bolton CD on alternate shuffle. Fix that small detail Anise and you might just see your tables fill up on a Friday night.

fu qi fei pian tasted slightly less spicy, but 80−90% authentic. Zhong shui jiao was 80% authentic, too viscous, a little too much sugar, not enough hot oil.
Pork with leek and peppers, too much dou shi, so a little bit on the salty side, pork a little undercooked.
I’d recommend this place to other Chinese/​Sichuan people but the price range is not in line with the quality. Although it is less Asian fusion than some other Asian fusion places.
Waitresses were Thai, but were very nice and wanted to learn how to pronounce the dishes in Chinese.

Had dinner on a Thursday night. We are vegetarian — and there are lots of veggie options here, all clearly marked with a «V» on the menu (that’s really nice to have from a Chinese place). The eggplant garlic dish was just awesome. Tender and a slight bit sweet.
The décor and dishware are really nice. Its true that the restaurant was fairly empty. Looks like they survive from all the lunch business as its within a high density office area. Will definately go again. Great place for large groups or families with kids since there’s no wait.

This place is bizarre. Upon entering I was confronted with a beautiful spacious interior. The décor was fantastic but once I was seated I realized something strange… on a saturday evening at 6pm there was only one other party seated in the entire place!
The appetizer I ordered was simple — terriyaki tofu. Triangles of bean curd perfectly (not overly) fried with a drizzle of sauce served on wooden skewers. They were delicious. My main dish, General Tso chicken was not so good. The chicken was tough and stringy. I actually had to spit a piece into my napkin because it resembled a dog’s chew toy. One of my companions had beef with onion and cumin which I tasted. This dish was good — the meat was tender and the spicing and flavor was just right.
A couple of other things of note — we ordered drinks but had to change our order because the staff did not know what a Sidecar was. Also the sun was setting and illuminated the very very unclean exterior windows. They need a window washer stat!
I am planning to return to try a couple other appetizers that sounded interesting. The issue that plagues this place is inconsistency. I suspect that is why this place was literally empty at dinner hour on a Saturday.

Hit or miss Sichuan dishes. This place gets point for striving to offer a more authentic menu (please do not come here for beef & broccoli or chicken fingers). Some of their items are truly tasty, while others are more meh — nothing to write home about. Inconsistency is perhaps their greatest enemy. I’ve found some dishes to be well-​seasoned to other dishes that are too salty or completely bland. I for one could stand for a dish or two to be spicier than it was.
The space is definitely more modern to cater to the younger/​hipper crowd, but service seems awfully lacking. I have never seen this place crowded, and with that, I often only find the one hostess lady available, and she can be hard to flag down. Lots of operational kinks yet to be worked out, but this place has been open for a while now. If they still can’t get it right, I’m afraid this place is likely to sink soon.
It’s not the worst option for food in the area. Food is definitely pricier than your typical Chinese restaurant. I think you pay for the ambiance and the space, more than the food.

I took out some food from Anise today. After a long St Patty’s day outing I was still feeling a little undernourished, so today I really needed some noodle soup goodness. Wisteria is a little far away for pick up and I think Mulan is closed on Mondays. So, this was my first visit to Anise even though I’ve wanted to go many other times. In addition to the noodle soup, I ordered the Sichuan beef dumplings in sweet hot sauce.
Yum.
For take out, it was excellent. A tupperware full of soft wheat noodles in spicy savory broth with chunks of beef (the beef wasn’t great) was exactly what I needed. Next time I might ask them to leave the beef out, though. Unlike some takeout, the soup was combined with the noodles, etc. in one tupperware. After some time, it would probably sog up, but I was able to enjoy it quickly. The dumplings were superb. Simple and delicious with a hint of spice and the sauce: garlicky. I liked it.
Anyway, it hit the spot for an $ 8 lunch. I’d get it again. But their lunch menu appeared limited. And their dinner menu is a little expensive.
I’m babbling. It’s Monday after St Patty’s day. I think I’m allowed to babble.
Side note: $ 20 minimum for deliveries + $ 3 charge.

Anise is a very awkward restaurant. On one side of the story, there’s an amazing decoration, from the tables and chairs to the silverware and glassware and even the walls, floors and atmosphere. On the other, there’s the food. That was the problem for me. Way too spicy, not savory or meaty enough and overpriced, I left disappointed but charmed by the fact that there is hope. If only they were to tweak their menu a bit and were to reduce the heat from the spices, they could be a hit! You can’t replace flavor with heat.

You might not want to eat here, because you may discover you really don’t like Chinese food, that is real Chinese food. Unless you have had home cooked Sichuan/​Szechuan or been to China, the taste sensations will challenge your palate in ways that it may not have been before. The menu here is unapologetically authentic. I went on a Tuesday for lunch and the place was quite full. I’m guessing the lunch crowd from Amgen et. al. keeps this place going, because I have seen reports that it is always empty. For lunch on a Tuesday it was packed. I wanted to have the Rabbit but they were out so I started with Spicy Beef Tendon, Pig Ears and Cucumbers, and Bamboo Shoots with Wild Fern. The tendons was very spicy and shaved wafer thin, it did have the mouth numbing heat. The pig ear was shaved slightly thicker but not too thick, it less spicy but quite delicious. We have been cooking bamboo shoots at home more and I’m reall a fan of the fresh stuff sliced quasi julienne, not like a can of overcooked LaChoy vegetables. The texture of a more al’ dente shoot is wonderful. The real star of the dish however was the wild fern which was heavily pickled. This is the type of taste sensation I was eluding to before, completely foreign to most western diners. Cold and tangy yet crisp, perhaps even a tad slimey. Alternating bites of fern and bamboo made for a a real yin and yang counterpoint. Since it was lunch I did get a special the Double Cooked Pork bellies. These were served in a dry-​ish sauce that could have been more spicy with rough chopped long green peppers and leeks. I devoured the entire plate in 3 minutes.
* The menu has English and Chinese, you don’t have to hunt for the gems the Frog, Rabbit etc are right out there.
* they do have the spicy beef with napa cabbage, that will be my next choice.
* the service was slow, only 1 waitress and hostess had the entire floor. I did not hold it against the staff.
* I did request brown rice but received jasmine rice instead.
* food came out relatively quickly
* Excellent bar with large Single Malt selection, I had a Tsing Tao to chill the spicy heat. Fair wine list.
* Two TV’s at the bar, SciFi channel and ESPN playing.
* NIce layout with a small but cozy waiting area and hip furnishings.

This is among the most disgusting food I’ve ever had. I work close by and when I saw the Best of Boston sticker I was very excited. I tried it a few months ago for takeout, tried the beef and broccoli after it took like 10 minutes to get the hostess to notice me.
It was gross. I went back to ask for hot sauce, but they apparently don’t stock hot sauce. I asked for chinese mustard, and they had no idea what I was talking about. I appealed to another service girl, who said «you mean yellow sauce?» I felt if I spoke I would say something extremely rude, so I just nodded.
Unfortunately, the mustard they stock is the disgusting bright yellow fake packaged chinese mustard like they use at a mall food court. Since I needed the a good hot sauce or mustard to cover up the foul taste of the beef and the slimy gunk of a sauce that everything was in, I just threw it all out.
I thought maybe I’d just gone on a bad day, and vowed to try it again someday.
That day was today. I ordered the spinach and tofu soup and the minced pork w/​spinach noodles. I ordered it via phone, in hopes that I wouldn’t have to wait as long this time. No such luck, when I went to pick it up, I had to wait 10 minutes for someone to come to the front desk. There were like 4 people eating.
The online menu has this soup listed at $ 3.50, but they charged me $ 5.95. I didn’t noticed this until after I got back to my desk, and I quickly forgot about the price differential when I touched the soup to my tongue. It was vile; it looked and tasted like dirty bathwater. It also had no spinach. Not a single piece.
I went back to return the soup. They took the soup, brought it to the kitchen, put some spinach in it, and gave it back to me. I asked for my money back, which they gave me, and they told me to keep the soup, which was nice. But the soup was still gross so I dumped it out, and added the vegetables and tofu to the pork & noodles.
This dish also turned out to be pretty gross. They layered the pork atop the noodles atop a peanut sauce in a quart-​sized plastic soup container, so there was no way to mix them together without making a huge mess. The noodles were overcooked and slimy. The pork tasted like little packets of rusty dirt. The menu didn’t say that it came in a peanut sauce (which I hate) and had I been allergic to peanuts, I surely would have died, since there was no indication of said sauce’s existence, since it laid secretively on the very bottom of the container.
Maybe I’ve just had bad luck but this place is gross.

I am Chinese and have lived in the U.S. for 10 years. My boyfriend is caucasian. We just moved to a house a block away from Anise.
I heard Anise is one of the best Chinese restaurant in Boston, but never tried it myself. My boyfriend went there once with his colleagues for lunch and said it was horrible, which pretty much stopped me from trying. One day, I was really craving for Chinese food and didn’t want to go far, so I convinced myself and my boyfriend to have dinner there.
It was by far one of the best Sichuan (Chinese) restaurant I’ve ever been to in the U.S. (I lived quite some time in NYC and SF also). All the ingredients are very authentic. I was extremely happy aftter the meal.
I think here are the reasons why it wan’t very popular
1) It’s strength is authentic Chinese food, but it’s much more upscale than most other Chinese restaurant which is not good as most Chinese around are students who are price sensitive
2) The other strength is it’s nice ambience and a lounge/​bar area that opens till late which could attract many non-​Chinese professionals, but the food is too «authentic» (i.e., spicy) for non-​Chinese to adapt
Anyways, their appetizers are quite reasonably priced $ 5 – 7 and have some of the best dishes

Ahhh, the epitome of Ghost Town, or Gui Cheng as they say in Chinese.
I really, really, feel bad about Anise. It has by far, one of the best interiors I’ve ever seen at any Chinese restaurant. A great hall of chairs, padded seats, tasteful wall décor, nice looking bar, and… No one in it. I went on a Tuesday night on an offal tasting bit, and after eating tongue, pig ear, and a few other things, I can say that the ingredients were fresh, the tastes were bold (mouth numbing), and surprisingly edible. I’m giving them an extra star if only because they’re so uncompromising with their menu, something that I have to respect.
So give them a shot some time, although try not to let the emptiness get to you. Maybe on a Friday or Thursday…
And yes, the bathroom is quite sketchy when compared to the rest of the restaurant’s interior… But can I really hold them down for that?

Not in Kendall Square!
OK, so I’m the new-​to-​Boston guy who just assumed that a place that is in Kendall Square would be near the T stop just like so many other places I frequent in Davis or Porter Square.
Not the case. Anise is at One Kendall Square which is actually a bit of a walk (and I can’t exactly tell you which way) from the Kendall T.
Nevertheless we made it and were pretty happy. Considering the reviews here seem to be either STELLAR or POOR, I was pleased with everything.
The food was all tasty, not too pricey, and came out really really fast. OK, there was only one other table on a Friday night, which did bother me a bit but perhaps everyone else also got lost.
Try the Dan Dan Noodles. I was excited to see these on the menu and they were garlicky and great! Too bad they were just an appetizer portion. Yum.

my dad and i hit up this place before a movie one weeknight last winter. the place was empty so service was fast and friendly. we told them we were in a bit of a hurry and they were accomdating.
the food was good but nothing out of the ordinary. the food was a bit greasy, but that was to be expected. my dad’s soup was spicy as requested and there were smiles all around.
as far as a quick meal before a movie or after work, i would say go for it. it is not a cheap chinese place, but will not break the bank either.

Had lunch there recently with my partner. The prices for lunch are very reasonable and the food was ok, though mine was pretty bland and boring. I did like the brown rice, though, and my partner’s dish was much more tasteful/​spicy. The waiter seemed a bit absent-​minded, but was nice enough. It’s certainly a good option for a quick and cheap lunch.
Had lunch there again and was pretty disappointed. We explicitly asked for «very spicy» and the food was still bland. But it’s nice to be able to sit outside. Still, the food is just boring.

This is not meant to be a swinging bar but rather a really fantastic place to eat — If you want to go to a really trendy, hot spot — then go to a crowded bar — don’t go to a restaurant and get pissed that it is — well — a restaurant. I have thoroughly enjoyed every meal I have had here — and also appreciate that I can get in without a fuss and can hear my friends when we dine here as a group.
I find the food absolutely wonderful — the last time I was there was in May. I also especially love their tea, which is served in a glass tea pot and opens as a flower… it is artistic as well as wonderfully yummy. I agree that the food is not typical or Americanized — but that is one of the things I liked about it… also, they have a sister restaurant in Medford, and I think this restaurant beats Medford out — which was previously a favorite.
I also like that I can park at the garage and get a validation — so, it is easy to get here and get out…
I do understand why some people would be freaked out that there are few people there… I can say from my experiences eating there that it is not in any way indicative of bad food — just perhaps bad marketing. So, I hope it picks up — because I love to eat here, and I want them to stay around for a while.

A very nice and relaxing environment. Very tasty spicy szechuan which was plated beautifully. Pork dumplings w. rice vinagar were delicious! Food was very clean and not greasy. Loved the spicy chicken with cucumbers. An very attentive cute waiter. It was a holiday and was mid afternoon and no other customers. Not sure as of why.
Poor bathroom which is in some scary basement.
Boo for charging $ 10 for a pot of oolong tea.

I recently changed my rating from five to four stars, because I went back and had some different menu items that were not quite as good. I think my five-​star rating might also have been a result of my server’s totally hot ass. Nonetheless, my original review below is still appropriate:
My roommate and I wandered into this place when Cambridge Brewing was overflowing with people and we had a movie to catch in an hour. What an experience!
Completely refreshing menu (sorry, no Gen Tso’s Chicken here), serene atmosphere, attentive staff… My roommate lived in China for several years and this was the best Chinese meal he’s had in the US. I completely agree, this may be the finest Chinese I’ve ever sampled.
I think Allix T. was expecting something like Avalon – I can understand her disappointment. I will be returning to Anise very soon.

Very good food, but a bit inaccessible. Not really catering to ordinary Western palates. However, the atmosphere is wonderful, plating is excellent, and the mixed drinks are awesome. If you’re not accustomed to Szechuan food, maybe take it slow – order some drinks, ask the bartender for a popular appetizer, etc. Oh, I forgot to mention: expensive.
(6÷28÷07: Have not been here in awhile… Perhaps it’s on its last legs given these reviews. Reports on Chowhound about a decline in the food suggest that’s the case. A pity.)

Anise is a great place to satisfy your adrenaline-​rush need for spice — straightforward chili heat and the hard to find numbing pleasure of sichuan peppercorns. And it’s perfect pre-​movie din-​din before going to the Kendall theater a few steps away.
As for the food — Vinegary scallop soup featured many of the flavors of a good hot and sour soup. Loved the salt and peppercorn crusted beef tenderloin (my mouth drools as I write this), double-​cooked pork belly and both the wontons (sauce more vinegary) and other dumplings (sauce more numbing).
Despite fantastic food (on one visit, mind you), I feel this place won’t make it. Kendall is a little bit of a ghost town at night. Apparently Anise has a bigger lunch crowd. But we were one of just three tables in a pretty large and well appointed space. So visit now, while you can. Hopefully these guys can stay in business long enough to build up a following.