Empress of Sichuan @ Chinatown, London

I have been craving Sichuan food of late and searching high and low for it in KL. The only ones I found are hawker-stall like restaurants in Pudu which seems kind of dodgy and some Chinese Muslim restaurant in either Kota Damansara or one of the nearby similarly-named areas. One authentic restaurant I found was Si Chuan Dou Hua at Federal Hotel but that is a pricey option. Anyone has any good recommendations?
   
Anyway London has quite a number of Sichuan restaurants within its Chinatown and after googling a bit, I settled on Empress of Sichuan. It is also quite pricey but I thought of splurging on this =)

     

Shop Front

       

Spicy Fragrant with Dried Chillies and Pepper (GBP 13 )

   
I love this dish! The chicken cubes are so tender and fragrant with the chilli oil and stir-fried peppers. Quite oily, mildly spicy (for Malaysian tastebuds) and extremely addictive when eaten with rice. I would highly recommend this d^_^b

   

Closer shot of the dish in all its fiery colours

   

Beef Slices in Extremely Spicy Soup (GBP 13.50)

   
Wanted to order another vegetable dish but it didn't seem worth it to pay so much for a tofu dish so being the greedy siblings we were, we opted for a beef dish. When it arrived at the table, we were shocked at its size - a huge bowl of sliced beef in what looked more like chilli oil than soup =.= The beef slices were really really tender and thin and they were really generous with the portion - we probably ate more than 10 slices each. If I remember correctly, there was also cabbage in the soup. My brother actually ladled the soup over his rice but I refrained from doing so due to the amount of oil to soup ratio. This is quite spicy and my brother enjoyed it but I think I prefer the chicken dish.

   

Long Green Beans with Minced Pork (GBP 9.20)

     
This is a non-spicy dish and good for counterbalancing all the chilli oil. I love this dish too as there was lots of wok hei in it. It's really addictive and I even finished it till the last bit when my brother could no longer take another bite. Highly recommended, this one.

   

Complimentary dessert

   
They gave us a complimentary dessert of layered red bean jelly. Not too sweet so it was just nice.
   

If you don't mind the slightly exorbitant price, Empress of Sichuan is a really good place to try out Sichuan food.

       

PawPoints: 4 Paws

      

http://www.restaurantprivilege.com/empress-of-sichuan/home.html

      

Empress of Sichuan
T: Leicester Square
6 Lisle St
Chinatown
London
Tel: +44 0207 734 8128

Mon - Wed: 12pm - 10.45pm
Thu - Sun: 12pm - 11.15pm