Szechuan House Restaurant

This review is solely base on their congee (rice porridge) and bun only, we did not try other food…
for $ 5 you get a bowl of congee (choice of meat) we tried them all different days: beef, pork with preserved egg, chicken, all were tasty and just right for break fast… could use some cleaning… but other than that come here for breakfast, it’s awesome, I can eat this everyday.

We came here before we went to the circus. just to get some BBQ pork buns… umm…it was cold… and the sauce was way too strong. The place looked like a dump (which is true for many chinese places in chinatowns) but at least they can clean it up a little bit. the service people weren’ friendly either…
I can’t say anything about the food (main courses) since all we brought was pork buns and a diet coke

This review is only based on the baked items!
Came here with a couple of coworkers to get some baked goodies. It took us a couple of minutes to find the server although there was only one other person in the restaurant, but once the lady stepped out of the kitchen she was totally friendly and helpful!
My coworker got a ton of baked goodies, so the lady behind the counter offered him a free one at the end :) They were all delicious and fresh!

Good bubbles in the bubble tea and decent selection of flavors but all from a powder taro and almond bubble teas were both good.

While I’m well aware that a good number of Chinese restaurants throughout America use various regional terms like «Szechuan/​Sichuan» or «Hunan» fairly liberally, this particular establishment in no way, shape, or form serves out anything even remotely close to typical Sichuan fare.
I’ve been to Sichuan, China. I know how spicy the dishes should be and what each should taste like (Chinese food in general, for that matter). Yes, American Chinese food is nothing like the real thing and I don’t walk into a Chinese joint expecting authenticity on par with anything hailing from the lovely land of red. However, it should be at least somewhat evident that there’s been an honest attempt made to replicate the original flavours and provide a quality end-​result.
I usually enjoy the more dive-​y Asian places, as the level of authenticity tends to be a bit higher (and at better prices). So after looking around a bit at some of other places around Chinatown, trying to weed out the overly Americanized ones, I was naturally drawn to this little place (though seeing: Xiaolongbao written in the window is what really got my attention).
After glancing at the menu a bit, I decided to order some Xiaolongbao (little dumplings filled with hot broth), Dandan Mian (noodles in a peanut sauce), and Zongzi (steamed rice with other fillings wrapped in bamboo leaves). Of course, as soon as I asked about the Xiaolongbao, I was told they were out of it. So, I opted for some Shaomai instead.
The Zongzi came out first. It was very dry and very, very bland. I didn’t bother finishing it.
The Dandan Mian came next, and looked like spaghetti noodles with a pile of peanut-​butter thrown on top. This was exactly what it tasted like. Normally, the dish comes with a bit of a spicy kick to it, but theirs had not one drop of spice (or hint of Chinese flavour whatsoever).
After that, the lady brings out 3 shrimp dumplings I hadn’t ordered, sets them right on our table and leaves. Since I already had some trouble ordering in English initially (ended up having to use Mandarin to make sure she got everything down correctly), I assumed that she had inadvertently brought out the wrong item. I don’t like complaining when I get the wrong dish (most times), and will normally just roll with it. I’d rather cut the waiter/​waitress a break than make a big deal about it.
So we eat the dumplings. About 5 minutes later, the lady comes back to our table, irate as ever, and begins yelling at me for eating the dumplings. Completely confused, I make it clear that I have no idea why she’s mad. She then proceeds to tell me «Those don’t belong to you. I charge you for those too now.». Why did she set them on my table then? There were about 10 other completely empty tables (there was all of one other customer in the entire place), so it’s not as though she was overwhelmed with orders and in a huge time-​crunch or anything. On top of that, SHE gets angry and charges ME for HER mistake? Super good.
Big surprise, the shrimp dumplings were disgusting. Shrimp, naturally, has a certain level of «fishiness» to it. I get that. However, these dumplings tasted as though they were filled with water from an old hatchery or something.
Finally, she brought out the Shaomai. Despite everything else being borderline inedible, I still had hope for the Shaomai. I mean, there’s no possible way to screw up Shaomai, right? Wrong. The meat just tasted «off» and the flavour in general was terrible. Since there were no typical dim-​sum condiments on the table and none were brought out with any of the food, I was only able to make it through about 2 pieces before just taking it to go (maybe some homeless person around the corner would enjoy it).
While paying, the lady did attempt some sort of apology, but it just ended up coming out as some sort of half-​hearted, «it was your own fault» kinda deal.
So if you’re a real glutton for punishment (and horrible «Chinese» food), try this place out. I’m sure your taste-​buds will appreciate it.

This review is basically only for the «bubble tea.»
The «bubble tea» wasn’t too bad of a deal, around $ 3 – 4 for a 12 oz drink. Though the drinks that I ordered were mostly sugar, their tapioca pearls beat out Teaism and Asian Bistro. I guess I’ll go whenever I’m in the Chinatown area.
They have some cheap dim sum style foods like pork buns and desserts as well as some entrée items. The store isn’t very clean, and every time I’ve been around dinner it’s mostly empty with 1 or 2 people leaving the other 3 or 4 tables unoccupied. Extra points for the Chinese Disney decorations!

I am starting to think I am a masochist. There were multiple signs that I should have walked right out of that restaurant, never to return:
A) It has a two and a half star rating on Unilocal.
B) It was empty at 8:00 on a Saturday night
C) Well, it’s a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown in DC. That alone trumps any other reason.
Despite my apparent lack of regard for my well being, I decided to give this place a try. Needless to say, I went in expecting the worst. What I got was an actually decent meal. For $ 10.40, I got 2 roast pork buns and a dish that consisted of beef, baby bok choy, and rice.
First, when I read «roast pork buns», I was expecting the kind you get at dim sum. These are NOTHING like that. They were cold (maybe they were supposed to be? I dunno) and I’m pretty sure the meat inside was just dumpling meat, instead of the sweet kind you get at dim sum. Honestly, I would say you can do without them. On the plus side, their other baked goods looked pretty tasty.
My beef dish was surprisingly decent. It wasn’t amazing but it was certainly more edible than the dishes in many other Chinatown establishments.

Overheard conversation:
Customer: «Do you guys have any shredded chicken left?»
Lady behind counter: «NO. ONLY HOT DOG.»
Oh Szechuan house, what a disappointment you are.
1.5 stars. Just because a place is a hole-​in-​a-​wall does NOT make it good.
The food is pretty terrible. I ordered Roast Pork Noodle Soup, and they made it with wide rice noodles, a flavorless broth, and as veggies used lettuce and raw carrot (which is a big no-​no with soup). The roast pork itself did not have a good flavor. Not necessarily bad, just kind of boring. Yes, the food is as cheap as other reviews purport it to be, no, the food is not good.
The baked goods on the other hand, are surprisingly decent, and worth a shot. While the food doesn’t get high turnover, there were people in and out for their baked goods. This is assuming you are in the mood for chinese baked goods (roast pork buns, red bean sesame balls). It might be slightly more authentic than other chinatown establishments, but if this is one of Chinatown’s better places, then that should serve as clear indication that you should just stray away from «chinatown» in general.
Going on the hole-​in-​a-​wall theme, the place is DIS-​GUSTING. I’m glad I couldn’t see the kitchen, because lord knows what goes on back there. I want to give this place one star (or no stars even), but the baked goods were alright, so let’s just say 1.5 stars.
Credit cards accepted, but there’s a $ 10 minimum.

The good: this place is cheap.
The bad: almost everything else.
First, although I’m not too squeamish about cleanliness, this place was off-​puttingly filthy. Second, the food was poorly prepared (my rice was cold), bland (not a szechuan pepper in sight), and generally inauthentic (my ma po tofu was just a few cubes of beancurd in a treacly gelatinous sludge, with no minced pork or other traditional ma po elements).
To their possible credit, everyone else who came in while I was there was buying a bun to take away. I didn’t try any of their bakery treats, but maybe they’re much better than their cooked meals.

This Chinatown hole-​in-​the-​wall makes a mean hot and sour soup. If you’re hungover, it’s magic.
At Szechuan House, little ladies serve up the usual assortment of dim sum and lunch plates. The place isn’t always packed like their neighbor — a big plus in my book — but if it’s crowded, they offer takeout and baked goods up front. Don’t expect to pay a lot here, but bring cash.

Not the best, but I still come by whenever I’m hungry. And only for the baked goods. I think this is the only Chinese place in Chinatown with bread items. Sad. But it guarantees my (relatively) frequent appearance.
Yes, speaking Chinese is a major plus.

Numma 1: This place is cheap, for all us high roller$
Numma 2: Hey, the grub’s pretty good!
If you’re not paying much attention, you probably won’t see this place while walking down the sidewalk. The sign out front is pretty plain, and the windows aren’t jazzed up like other places in Chinatown.
Also, when you enter, the interior is pretty plain. It’s a bit worn, and you may even begin to question your decision to eat here, perhaps even be mildly repulsed, but have no fear! You will be assuaged!
The interior is tiny, but luckily I showed up between lunch and dinner. I ordered the «pancake» (scallion pancake) and the ma po tofu. Total was just under $ 11 at the dinner price. Lunch prices for entrees are $ 1 cheaper. There are dinner and lunch specials which run about $ 7.95 for an entrée, rice, and egg roll.
Hands down, the best scallion pancake I’ve ever had. Yes, ever. Why? It wasn’t just a mass of pan fried dough with a smattering of scallions here and there. The pancake was thin, and the scallions abounded.
And the ma po tofu was pretty good. It wasn’t as hot as I would have liked, but it was definitely good. Additionally, the serving was really large.
This place is definitely worth it once you moved past the superficial.

Great happy hour special: buy three buns, get one free. It always comes out to less than $ 5.
Man, Chinatown needs more of these tiny store fronts restaurants. The cheap prices, small town feel, and outstanding food really turn this unassuming place into a destination.
Despite it’s really lowkey presentation, this may be the ‘homeliest’ place to achieve five star status on my list.
You’d better believe I’ll be here again.

$ 3.50 for lunch. As long as it’s not poop, I’m pretty much down to eat it at that price.
Szechuan House not so much a restaurant as it is a hole in the wall next to some dumpsters. It’s cramped, falling apart, probably violating as many health codes as you can without getting shut down immediately, and isn’t entirely friendly.
But lunch for $ 3.50.
Typical steam tray grocery store Chinese food, covered in sauce probably gone nuclear by the amount of salt and MSG in it; but I’m okay with it. I’m not coming here expecting gourmet service (or, normal service… they’re serving on paper plates here) or a nice view. This is a great place for a very quick, very cheap lunch. The portions are genuine, it’s filling food, the veggies tasted fresh underneath that sticky blanket of sauce, and the tofu was quite nicely done, especially for steam tray tofu.
Come with no expectations, a hungry tummy, and the change in your change jar.

I’d say that you could come here if you had absolutely nowhere else to go. I couldn’t decide where to go, and since I hadn’t been to DC since I was a kid, I had no idea where to go in Chinatown, because I just ended up there and had done no research. So I decided to split the difference and get some food from here and some from another place.
As other reviewers suggest, it definitely helps if you speak Chinese, and my repertoire is limited to about 5 phrases.
I got the scallion pancakes, which were awfully small and greasy, but the price was less expensive than any other I’ve had before. I also ordered some kind of shrimp and garlic sauce something-​or-​other, and it was mostly sauce and white vegetables (water chestnuts, maybe?), but then again, the price was only a few dollars, so it was kind of «ehh, whatever.» I probably wouldn’t go back, but it did the job for the night.
People were coming in for the baked goods there, but a lot of them seemed to have meat in them, and since I don’t eat meat, I just didn’t even try to bother at that point, but maybe, just maybe, I would stop in for a vegetarian one in the future.

3.5 stars, only on the baked goods.
And I agree that this is one of those places where if you speak Chinese, you’ll get good service and good food. Otherwise, you’d have better luck next door at Chinatown Express.
At $ 1.10 a pop, the red bean paste filled sesame balls were worth venturing into this little hole in the wall. They are big, a little more airy than the ones I’m used to in China, but that might be because they weren’t piping hot out of the fryer. The red bean paste filling is plentiful and perfectly sweetened.
They have quite a few congee items on the menu and various buns that I am looking forward to trying in the future.

I’m around the corner at the Chinatown liquor store when I ask the owners, «Is there a place where I can get a bao??»
«Yes…» the woman hesitated to tell me, «it’s across the street, but …»
Yeah I knew what that «b-​b-​b-​but» meant. It was going to be nasty, but dammit nostalgia hit me hard at work today. Cupcakes may be all the rage in this city, but for me, the only medicine to a long day is a bao.
Ah, fluorescent lights, stained butcher paper signs, and bare white walls never looked more beautiful than tonight guys. A few yards approaching the door I caught sight of a shiny glass case full of neon yellow buns. I ran in and asked the owner if they had my favorite, dou sha bao. Red bean paste bun. «Yes,» she said, «would you like anything else?» I stared long and hard at the rest of the selection. The buns were all flat and ugly and the steamed buns already wrapped in plastic wrap. The flies flying all over the baked goodies told me not to get anymore. This was a special treat, they said, don’t ruin it by getting more.
A dollar ten. That’s it. It tasted like what it was supposed to. And I couldn’t have been happier. I’ll come back for you, my little Chinatown bakery.

This place rocks (if you speak Chinese).
I took some of my friends here to score a quick dinner, and we were quite satisfied. For 30 bucks, 3 college guys ate to their fullest, you can’t beat that kind of pricing when in DC (unless you talk about those 35 cent buffalo wings at Rhino’s/Rhodeside).
The trick is, you have to know how to order, and you have to order it in Chinese. They’ll ask you how spicy you want your food, if you want it true Szechuan style, tell them 100%.
The bakery here is great, whenver I’m in C-​town, I drop by for a few pieces of bread to soak up whatever other beverages I was previously drinking.
As they say, A = American, B = Better, C = Chinese.
Explanation on some of the dishes you ordered: seafood chow mein is prepped 2 ways, one is the «soft yellow egg noodles»; the other is via «dried fried egg noodles», the style depends on the region.
General Tso’s Chicken is not Chinese.
Chinese restaurants _​always_​have poor service, you come here to eat, not to get pampered.
On a side note, shmoozing with the manager scored me a free appetizer.

Eat fast, it’s lunch for under $ 5! But it’s not the worst food I’ve had in Chinatown. I had General Tso’s Chicken which was so sugared that the sauce clung like hot tar to the chicken. The fried rice was more like soy sauced rice. Nothing exciting. And the hot and sour soup was okay.
Since I like dives like this where the folks are friendly, I’ll come back and try their bread items, like their bacon and onion bread.

Typically dirty restaurants have the best food, however, it was not the case w/​this place. Not only was it dirty, the food was disgusting too! My friend and I ordered 2 bowls of Congee w/​Pork and Preserved Egg, my bowl was soupy and full of fat — not a piece of meat all! The congee also had a weird taste too it, not sure what it was. I definitely don’t recommend this place!