Szechuan House is insanely close to my house. I’ve been here tons of times and just realized recently that I’ve never posted about it. I’m not sure why though. I really like the food here, but I get the feeling that other people don’t like it as much as I do. I have a bit of a more simple palate sometimes. I don’t like ketchup and most condiments on my food. If something comes with some kind of sauce on it, I get the sauce on the side. I don’t like spicy foods or anything with really strong flavors. I guess I’m a little picky sometimes. Anyway, what was my point? I don’t remember, but I like the food here. I think that’s the point.
I usually come in for lunch. They have $5.95 lunch specials which you get soup – egg drop soup (I like to fish the peas out) or hot and sour soup (the boyfriend enjoys the hot and sour, I do not, but that’s because I don’t like it in general). The soup is okay. It’s your basic egg drop. It’s got a good amount of egg and a scant amount of vegetables. I enjoy the broth and the minimum amount of peas. You also get a variety of interesting appetizers with your lunch special as well. You get an egg roll, some fried chicken wings (surprising) and this other won ton thing with I don’t know what in it, which the boyfriend always gives to me to eat. Sometimes I give him my chicken wing when I don’t feel like eating it. I’ve always thought it was weird that they gave a little piece of fried chicken along with your meal. It also doesn’t really taste like normal fried chicken to me, either. There’s some kind of other spice or flavor to it that I’ve never been able to put my finger on, but it’s a tasty little piece of fried goodness.
You can also order other items from their regular menu as the lunch special for an additional $2. The boyfriend and I like getting the cashew chicken (it’s an additional $2) and I think their cashew chicken is some of the best I’ve ever had. It’s mostly just chicken with a good amount of cashews and a small amount of vegetables. I hate ordering it from other places and getting like 5 cashews, a lot of celery, and some chicken pieces. This place really gives you what you want – chicken and cashews. I did not order chicken with a hint of cashew nor did I order chicken with large celery chunks. Yes, the picky-ness is showing through. The fried rice is again fairly plain, not a lot of other “stuff” in it, but its decent as far as rice goes.
Some other good items they have here are the sweet and sour pork and the Mongolian beef. I have this strange tendency to order a lot of the same thing all of the time, so I can’t recall what else I’ve had here. But I can also say with certainty that the cream cheese wontons are excellent – they’re sweet and tasty. Most of the food here kind of sticks to the basics. You don’t get a lot of “filler” in your food – like extra vegetables or other things to detract from the item your actually ordering (you get lots of chicken with your chicken dishes, etc).
The service here is decent. The waiters are pretty friendly and attend to your needs pretty well. The restaurant is a pretty small, dark little place with this crazy horse wall mural (see above). I took my mom here one time and she said that she wished she could take the mural home and put it on one of the walls in her house, but I don’t know why anyone would want to look at this washed out horse motif all day. But then again, weird kind of runs in the family.
I’m going to copy Alyssa on this whole “letter rating” thing and give the Szechuan House a “B”. It’s a more casual, laid back, decent food kind of place. It’s nothing really fancy or spectacular, but the food will fill you up and make your tummy happy. It usually makes my tummy pretty happy. Happy tummies, hooray!
Szechuan House
9323 Mira Mesa Blvd
(at Black Mountain Rd)
San Diego, CA 92126
(858) 586-1620
Closed Mondays
