Szechuan Province Restaurant (formerly Szechuan Restaurant) — Restaurant in Victoria

Update July 2024 warning new owners!

I've been coming here (or ordering in) monthly since the '80s and it's always been perfect and unchanged. So I chose this for my birthday dinner with another fan on June 29th.

Evidently they've sold and the new owner didn't buy the recipes, so they changed the name to Szechuan Province and replaced the five-star recipes with three star ones. 😭

Their unique and flavourful crispy ginger beef was missing the ginger, the shredded carrot, and the zing. The lemon chicken had no lemon flavour at all, and the chicken had been precooked and then breaded and deep fried so it was dry and tough, inedible IMO. RIP tender delicious lemon chicken 😭. The boneless pork was 100% flavorless, even missing salt. 😳

The only good thing was the fried rice, I forget which one... Unfortunately we thought we'd eat in (always better fresh) but two tables had just been sat, so instead of telling us there'd be a wait, (which we would have been fine with) they proceeded to serve every table one dish every 5 minutes, with the fried rice last, so it wasn't enjoyable. The new milk tea was delicious though.

I found it inedible and didn't want to take leftovers home but my friend paid $80+ for it so I was trying not to complain.. much lol. I ended up giving my leftovers away to my friend who said it wasn't terrible, just on par with the other Cantonese restaurants in town so I gave it a 3, but compared to beforehand I would give it a 1! 😬

This week we got our Szechuan craving again and thought we'd give it a second chance, I assumed maybe they had a new cook or the regular cook was sick, and after 35+ years this being the only bad experience, I was totally willing to cut them slack. But I read through the reviews and saw that other people are also having the same experience, and that there might be new owners with new recipes that were so bad that I won't go back.

I had to resort to going through all the reviews on Google, and luckily there was a place called Panda something on Oak Bay Avenue getting 4.6 stars so we went there instead, and it was light and fresh and delicious and flavorful so it is officially our new favorite place! 🎉💯

Pre 2024 (rating 4.5) Ah-may-zing!! Famous for their crispy Ginger Beef, this is the best best ginger beef in North America hands down, tender and meaty with minimal flour, deep fried and tossed in a delicious spicy ginger dark sauce.

Once I was trying to order new things and not order it and I cheekily asked the guy on the phone "ah does anyone not order the crispy Ginger beef?" And he said very dryly "no everybody they order the ginger beef" LOL.

Also the lemon chicken is the most tender chunks of chicken you've ever had in your life! And the dry garlic pork, not ribs, is a large serving of lean crispy pork, those three are my trifecta! With rice $50 and it's enough...

We decided to try this place since we wanted authentic Chinese food. We ordered the 2-person dinner but subbed out the sweet and sour chicken for mapo tofu. It came with wonton soup or hot and sour soup. We ordered hot and sour but got wonton soup by mistake. They corrected the order but gave us the wonton soup on the house. Both soups were delicious.

The beef dish was delicious. The mapo tofu was very good as well. We had so much food left over that we took the food home and made fried rice with our leftovers.

Amazing food and great service. We were very pleased with this restaurant. It was very quiet there, though. I suspect most of their business is take out. The parking situation is either a paid parking lot or the small amount of space on the other side of the restaurant. That might be why it appears to be mostly take out, but it is definitely worth the trip for this amazing authentic...

Please note this is for Szechuan Restaurant on Caledonia downtown, which is not affiliated with the Szechuan restaurant that closed on Burnside Road October 2023. I did an order through skip, but somehow it didn’t work out. I just came from the hospital for day surgery and actually was told I had to walk to the restaurant to pick up my order. Luckily, I lived near enough I could figure it out and get myself dressed and out for dinner to pick up. The place was really busy with a lot of other Asian influenced people which to me is a good sign and they were quite busy. The food was good. It really was but the sweet-and-sour sauce tasted weird - not traditional sauce as you would expect. I would say it rates size 7 out of 10 for price and food...