Spices Restaurant and Bar

I haven’t eaten at too many Szechuan places in my life so don’t have much to compare this place to but I’ve become addicted to the fish in flaming red hot oil dish. I dream about it sometimes and go about once a month to get my fix.

CLOSED: My all time favorite Chinese restaurant in the Foster City /​San Mateo area, a standout in a sea of tired sameness. I am distraught and dismayed to report that this will now be some type of French restaurant.

They were really good and I really liked the place. But they are closed now. I’ll post the new address if I find out more info.

This place is not authentic Sichuan place. It’s run by Taiwanese people. I tried both Richmond and this branch in foster city. Both are super popular but the food is meh…
It’s really salty and oily. You will expect a lot of grease and drink lotta water afterward. The spicy tofu wrapped in a foil paper was really salty and not spicy. I don’t understand why this place can be so popular. I would never go back again.
Cooking papa and Joy restaurant in foster city are way better.

A decent Szechuan place. I came with a group of friends, and ordered some usual Szechuan dishes (e.g. twice-​cooked pork, cumin lamb). The spice level is just right for me, but it may be too light for others. We didn’t order any of the extremely spicy dishes either, so not sure how hot those are.
The menu was hilarious to read in Chinese. They had some funny names for their dishes. Too bad those don’t translate well into English, but they tried their best to make the English names interesting as well.
The service and atmosphere was average. Nothing that really stood out.
The reason I gave this place a ⁴⁄₅ is because it’s not easy to find a decent Szechuan place. Most Szechuan places I’ve been to put too much emphasis on making the food spicy, and you really can’t taste the other flavors. Not to mention that it’ll be so spicy that I can’t really enjoy the meal. But this place is just right for me.
Atmosphere: ³⁄₅
Food: ⁴⁄₅
Service: ³⁄₅

I’m confused, I thought Spices! was in San Mateo, or at least that was where I was told we were headed… but oh wells… Foster City it is, according to the Unilocal business profile…
We had slight difficulty in finding Spices! Restaurant & Bar once we had found parking in the shopping plaza. No wonder! It was a short walk away from the parking lot and right by the water.
The bar area had live music going on that evening and the dining room was doing well and had family business covered. We ordered a bunch of things to share including (iirc) Chef Wang’s Sizzling Beef w/​Basil $ 10.95, Szechuan Beef Noodle Soup $ 7.95, Sweet & Sour Crispy Fish Fillet $ 12.95, Salt & Pepper Calamari (off the Hot Bites) $ 8.95, Eggplant in Garlic Sauce $ 9.95, Dry Braised String Beans $ 8.95, Spicy Pig Ear with Red Oil $ 6.50, Flaring Pot of Pork Stomach (pork stomach & blood, napa cabbage, bamboo shoots, tofu, and Spam) $ 10.95.
Some dishes were out of my spice comfort zone, but I made due with the ones I could handle. Food was good, but after my previous evenings’ meals, this was not quite in the same ballpark.
Water came with floating citrus bits.
Certain items were missing from the take-​out menu, such as the Hot Pot and Dessert sections, which included:
1) Red Bean Paste Fried Cake (4) $ 6.50
2) Mini Dumplings in Rice Wine Soup $ 6.95/$ 12.95
3) Eight-​Treasure Sweet Rice $ 12.95
4) Mango Pudding $ 1.50
Oh, I wish we had had the tummy room to try the mango pudding!

What a nice location on the water to enjoy a view and a nice meal. I have had Spices for dinner and take out multiple times, it varies from the Spices restaurant in the city but still good food. The crispy garlic fish, diced green beans, and tan tan noodles are the go to eats.
Nice atmosphere inside, seating on the water outside if the weather is good enough, and a bar inside as well.

Decent food place with a great selection of vegetarian dishes. While I wasn’t completely blown away by the dishes I ordered, I found a couple that would be great for the next time.
The Cold noodles, Kung Pao and Twice cooked Tofu were all okay. The waiting staff was very friendly and fast. I am going to come back a few more times before I make up my mind about this place.

As an update, You CAN actually improve the quality of this noodle soup by asking for the full spiciness. This actually makes the noodles decent but still not up to the high bar that Spices 3 has set.

First, a caveat: I have been commuting between the Bay Area and Shanghai for over 15 years. I have watched the food scene in Shanghai explode during that time. There is unfortunately no Bay Area restaurant I know of which can match the flavors and fire of any decent restaurant in Shanghai. But this one comes reasonably close.
One challenge is that there are many Chinese ingredients that are not available here, so the trick is to find the right substitutes.
A lot of Americans will be put off by some of the dishes, or won’t «get» them. If you want a version of what you are used to in generic Chinese food, don’t go here. Some of the negative reviews here list dishes I would never order, either in the US or in China (HINT: chicken fried rice, sweet and sour chicken, «egg rolls», and beef and broccoli in mystery brown sauce are not Chinese food, Duh!)
Again, in China, this would get two or three stars on the Unilocal scale.
Oh, yes, the view and setting are cool! In warm weather, it’s a great place to sit outside.

I went here for my dad’s birthday and it was AWFUL. The view is beautiful, but that’s about the only good thing I can say about it. My brother and I are very picky eaters but my mom and dad are not, especially my dad. We ordered chicken fried rice, lamb chops, cucumber, white rice, orange chicken, egg rolls, beef and broccoli, and a few other dishes. Everything was awful! My brother and I tried a lot and couldn’t eat anything. The beef was very fatty, the fried rice was wet and milky with NO flavor and the egg rolls were wet inside! So wet it started to make the outside of it wet as well. The only thing edible was the white rice. My entire family tried everything and out of the 8 dishes we ordered, we couldn’t eat anything. We didn’t want to be rude, so packed up all of our dishes and took it to go. Needless to say we dumped it into the trash.
The coke was great… but that’s after we asked for it about 10x. Needless to say, we will never be going here again.

I had lunch with 11 co-​workers today. It was not very busy, but they refused to give us a larger table than one that fits 10 comfortably. Customer service was lousy in general and they don’t seem to care.
The food was decent. I got the Szechuan beef noodle soup. The noodles were handmade and it was huge with lots of beef and tendon. Very good. I tried some of the other dishes. Orange chicken was very bland so don’t order that, but the vegetarian tofu curry was really good. i tried a couple fried rices and they were nicely flavoured.
Four star food; two star service

Im a fan of the difference Spices restaurants. One night we came here when we couldnt decide on anything else. After looking at the extensive menu we decided on:
Chicken wings with explosive pepper
Tea Smoked Duck
Spicy Beef Bowl in Chili Oil
Fried Fish Fillet Snowed w/​Garlic
Everything had a great spicy kick to it and very flavorful. Since we were there late you’d think most Chinese staff want to kick you out but they were very nice with us staying to the very end past close and being the only patrons left. With a plethora of Sichuan places popping up, it’s understandable that they have a handful of restaurants cause of their good cooking

It’s been a couple of years since I have been to Spices and the ownership has recently changed. We booked a large party for their banquet room last night and the new owner was extremely accommodating.
Last night, we had a party of 24 and had a banquet dinner for two tables. The menu consisted of the following:
Marinated bean curd ⁴⁄₅ stars
Marinated cucumbers ⁵⁄₅ stars
Mixed Veg salad ⁴⁄₅ stars
Mixed tendons/​tripe ⁴⁄₅ stars
La Tze Chicken ⁵⁄₅ stars very spicy
Yu Shiang Prawns ⁵⁄₅ stars huge prawns
Salty Egg Crab ⁵⁄₅ best dish of the night comes with crispy fired rice cakes
Braised Pork Shoulder ⁴⁄₅ nicely done
Steamed Whole Fish ⁵⁄₅ perfectly steam tender and flavorful.
Seafood Tofu Soup ³⁄₅ kinda simple few ingredients
Fermented sweet rice wine Mochi ⁵⁄₅ perfect desert
Fruit Plate ⁴⁄₅ pineapple, apple, honeydew melon,
We had a great dinner and party last night thanks to the staff and the new owner at Spices. When we were leaving the bar still had a couple of patrons singing karaōke. I will defiantly come back soon to try the other items on the menu. Full Bar

There are a bunch of Taiwanese restaurants in the San Mateo/​Foster City area, but Spices stands out for having a nice interior and a full page of vegetarian (mostly vegan) options. In fact, the menu even uses the word vegan, which is a rarity in traditional Taiwanese restaurants.
We got the «numbing spicy cucumber» ($ 5.50), stir-​fried watercress ($ 10), fire popped tofu skins ($ 10), and a «stinky fried tofu» ($ 6), the latter of which gives this restaurant some fame, as it’s an unusual dish.
First, the stinky tofu is exactly what the name implies. The smell isn’t unbearable, but it’s not pleasant — it’s hard to describe. The taste of the tofu, which is fried, is also bizarre and strange. I’m an adventurous eater, but I found this dish basically unpalatable after a couple of bites, and my Chinese friend (who grew up eating this type of dish) also admitted that she can only handle stinky tofu in miniscule quantities. That said, I could understand the appeal — it tastes weirdly sour and made my jaw twitch. Maybe if I ate it many more times it would grow on me. Or not.
The numbing spicy cucumber didn’t have enough Szechuan peppercorn, so it didn’t numb very much. The dish comes cold, so it’s oddly unsatisfying and not particularly spicy either.
The fire popped tofu skins were not in fact tofu skins; they seemed to me more like thinly-​sliced pieces of dense tofu. The sauce on this dish was okay, but again not spicy enough and the dish felt kind of drab; it basically was just strands of tofu with a few slivers of greens.
Oddly enough, the watercress ended up being the best dish. It was a simply sauté of watercress with garlic and tasted great.
The portion sizes are good, so this place is a decent value. Unfortunately, they don’t have brown rice, so I went without.
The service was friendly and prompt. They even removed the stinky tofu from our bill as neither of us liked it. I appreciated this mightily.
All in all, I’d probably return to Spices as the menu shows promise, if they could just jack up the spice a little.

I’m a fan of the chain in the city, so it was nice that this place was larger with a private dining area and ample parking. The food was a bit above average unless you know what to order. Be prepared for hot spices or else you should dine somewhere else. Some highlights are the crispy rice with Chinese salted egg, pork shoulder, chicken with basil and stinky tofu. The fish is cooked just right if you can handle the heat.
Service is friendly, but not helpful in terms of guiding you to the right party. Parking is ample.

Came here today for lunch with four of my Chinese coworkers as they highly recommended it. Based on Unilocal reviews this restaurant is known for good Sichuan and Taiwanese dishes. My Chinese coworkers like spicy food, while I, a Taiwanese, like the less spicy dishes. So we settled on a happy middle point. I left the ordering task to them as a couple of them had frequented this place and knew what to order that was not too spicy. So here was what we got:
Kiss of Fire Orange Fish Filet ($ 12.95) — Breaded and deep fried white fish that was sweet outside and very tender inside. The name may lead you to think it is very spicy. Wrong! It was hardly spicy at all! It was very tasty, not too greassy, and had pretty generous portion. The 5 of us did not finish the dish and we had to pack the leftover.
Sliced Pork Shoulder ($ 12.95) — My favorite dish of the meal. A huge chunk of pork shoulder braised for hours to fork tender consistency. I liked that they kept a thin layer of skin on top of the piece as that gave the top layer added moisture and tenderness, as well as flavor. When you bit into the meat with the skin, the skin just melt in your mouth. The meat, however, was a little chewy. I think they overcooked it this time. One of my coworkers also agreed that, as she had tried this dish before and it was braised perfectly and not as chewy as today’s. They glazed the outside of the meat with something sweet so it tasts very much Shanghai-​style, as opposed to Sichuan as it is NOT spicy at all. I liked it nontheless as I’m big on braised meat dishes!
Scallop Snowed with Fried Garlic ($ 14.95) — Nice presentation as they used an ablone shell as the container and the scallop was fried just right; slightly crispy outside but very tender inside. The fried garlic was a little over cooked though. It was so dry and hard and tasted a little bitter. When I first took a bite I thought I got a small piece of bone or something, LOL… There was plenty of small pieces of scallop embedded with lots and lots of the fried garlic. I would have liked more scallop and less garlic though. Again, this was NOT spicy at all either.
Dry Braised String Beans ($ 8.95) — Again generous portion and braised perfectly and did not taste too greasy either. Another NON-​SPICY dish.
Iron Pot Mixed Tofu ($ 9.95) — So this was the only dish that was spicy today. And it happened to be my least favorite dish too. I am not a big fan of tofu so I normally would not spend nearly $ 10 to order a dish of tofu, which is basically dirt cheap if you go to Ranch 99 to buy it yourself. This dish did contain a fair amount of chili oil and so was spicy, but not too spicy for me either.
Rice ($ 6.25) — since this showed up on the bill, apparently they charged $ 1.25 per person for the big bowl of steamed white rice they served. I don’t recall most other Chinese restaurants charge rice by the headcount. Maybe this is a new thing?!
All in all, I think they did execute well in the dishes we ordered. They were not busy during lunch hour. We arrived a little bit before noon and we were the only ones there. By the time we were leaving around 1 pm, the patio area did fill up. It was nice sitting out on the patio with the water view on a beautiful day like this.
So after tax and tip, we paid $ 18 per person. Not bad for trying 5 uniquely different dishes. Their lunch special menu has better deal but then you don’t get to try so many dishes family style.
Oh, and their bathroom was very nice and clean. I don’t usually see bathroom so nice at hole-​in-​the-​wall Chinese restaurants. That was nice compared to their neighbor, the Kobe Sushi Bar right next door, where there is no bathroom inside the restuarant and you have to get the key and go all the way past a few stores to use the shared bathroom there.
I would definitely go back to try their real Sichuan dish or Taiwanese small plates next time!

What a decent surprise. Not quite the kind of Taiwanese food I have expected. Perhaps I was hoping for more Tainan style dishes and appetizers. Spices 4 has a really extensive menu with most dishes of Szechuan origin with occasion Shanghainese crossover.
As the name implied, spicy Szechuan cuisine are what they specialized in. Out of four dishes I have ordered, only one was mediocre. The rest are all above average. That alone guarantees a second visit.
Fire Burst Mongolian Lamb (³⁄₅ stars) — Flavor is good. Spiciness on the mellow side. The meat, unfortunately, is not of great quality. The lamb has been over tenderized and lost some of its rightful texture.
Taiwanese Lettuce with Garlic (⁴⁄₅ stars) — Can’t really go wrong with a simple veggie dish like this. The vegetable is fresh and not overcooked.
Salt & Pepper Stinky Tofu (⁴⁄₅ stars) — Surprisingly great. The tofu cubes are lightly fried and not oily at all. Crispy with a firm inner texture. Delicious!
Pork Intestine with Fresh Basil (4.5÷5 stars) — I simply love this dish. The intestine is cleaned properly and there were no nasty after taste/​smell. Quite spicy but the flavors are balanced. Not overly oily or salty. Does not numb my tongue even after eating a lot of eat. Wonderful dish.
Some of the waitstaff was rather new but service was still friendly and efficient. This restaurant is right by waterfront and has a nice view. The ambiance is casual and relaxing. They even have live music at the bar outside. I like this place. I will be back.

Your heart beats a little faster, your body temperature rises, you start taking off articles of clothing, you start to sweat, and it all ends in an explosion once you’re done.
WOW, I just love spicy food!
I’ve been to the other Spices but I have to say this one is probably the most interesting. It was remodeled from an old Italian restaurant. so the dining area is all Olive Garden. On the Friday night we went, they had live classical music. The musician even walked around the dining room playing his violin. I dig the trendy looking lounge. Taking this all in with the spicy grub it’s a sensory overload.
The braised eggplant with garlic sauce dish came smoking to the table on a fire ring. Very tender with the garlic oil giving a nice flavor. (
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The lamb with cumin, was good. Loads of cumin, garlic, and ginger. All dishes were tasty, with loads of flavor. The only thing was that it was just a little too greasy with all the hot chili oil. (
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The heat isn’t overpowering or sudden, like Thai. It’s more mellow and creeps up on you so you can still taste all the flavors.
This food gives both pleasure and pain. 3.5 stars is about right.

I don’t have much to add to Scott L’s ROTD review of this place, but since I’m not feeling that generous, I’m rounding a 3.5 to 3 stars unlike Scott…
I started off a bit annoyed, since two dishes I had wanted to order weren’t served that night. According to the waitress, they were allegedly out of a «soup noodle» dish, while «soups» without noodles and dry «noodles» were available.
Regardless, we ended up having a pleasant dinner. In addition to the GIGANTIC Meat Ball (it’s so enormous, it makes you question why it has to be so large) and the ultra hot Fried Tofu with Explosive Chili Pepper, I tried a spicy Fish & Tofu plate and Beef and Broccoli. They were both flavorful, though a bit too greasy for my stomach. (heartburn!)
The restaurant is almost impossible to find, so make sure you nail the location in advance or else you’ll end up aimlessly wandering around like we did. We liked the inside atmosphere, and the service was slow, but not rude. It’s appropriate for any occasion.
SUM: That giant meat ball deserves at least three stars.