Chengdu Taste — Restaurant in Honolulu

A vendor treated me to lunch at Chengdu Taste … It was my first time here. You order your food online and a server brings the dishes to your table.

We ordered three dishes … Boiled Sliced Fish in Hot Sauce, Toothpick Lamb with Cumin and Szechwan Tan Tan Noodle. The lamb was first to arrive …. Petite pieces of lamb on toothpicks mixed with chopped red chilis, cilantro and a generous sprinkling of cumin spice. It was tasty but somewhat dry; we asked for some kind of sauce and we were served a bowl of chili oil. It would be a great appetizer with beer.

The Szechwan Tan Tan Noodles arrived next and this ended up being my favorite of the three dishes. The ground pork, peanuts, Szechwan peppercorns and sesame paste coated the noodles perfectly. I could just have this dish and be a happy diner. The boiled sliced fish dish came last. Nice pieces of a white fish (Basa?) was swimming in a very spicy chili sauce. Wow, heat! There were pieces of cabbage similar to kimchi and bean sprouts. This was a very tasty dish but probably should have been eaten over rice.

I love spicy food but kept running through the paper napkins because I was perspiring profusely. Each dish was fine though I would have liked some kind of dipping sauce for the lamb. Something besides chili oil. In summary, I enjoyed my first meal at Chengdu Taste and want to return to try other dishes....

Visited many times, some dishes are authentic while some are not! One of the most signature Sichuan dishes, chilli diced chicken has not even reached the average, while the month watering chicken is excellent. The fried chicken gristle was very good as usual tho.

Parking is not that easy there as well.

Visited again in 2025, having something different, something I usually don't order for Sichuan food. It turned out to be very unsatisfactory. The Dongpo Hock was too spicy which is supposed to be soy sauce braised to be authentic. Tried their chitlins(intestines) many times but first time try in boiled hot sauce, very greasy and the intestines didn't seem to be cleaned properly this time. The Bobo chicken tastes good but without chicken feet is very disappointing. The most terrible dish this time was the sauté eggplant with spicy garlic sauce, I tried that before and it was good, but this time, I think they used over mature eggplant, the skin of the eggplant tasted like a cow skin, very plastic like, hard to bite, can be the worst dish I've ever tried here.

Overall, the quality of the foods here can be very unstable....

Telephoned ahead to confirm closing time of 3 PM. Confirmed.

Arrived before 2:30 PM to discover a CLOSED sign on the door. The place was full of customers, so we entered anyway, only to see a several servers throw up the X arms.

All we wanted was a couple bowls of noodles.

No deal.

Know how long it takes to throw noodles in hot water and scoop them into a bowl? 'Bout a jiffy.

They could have filled our orders in seconds, and we would have been fed and gone well before the published and CONFIRMED AHEAD OF TIME BY TELEPHONE closing time of 3 PM.

Requested, explained, quoted closing time confirmation phone call prior to traveling from near the Honolulu Zoo, pleaded, begged...

Still no deal.

These cats were QUIT at (before) 2:30 PM, completely regardless of the convenience, comfort, or feelings of guests who, by all sensible parameters, had arrived on time.

In other words, SERVICE SUCKS !

HOWEVER, just a few steps Diamond Head (East, towards Walmart) from this sucky service joint is the Urban Bistro & Bakery, where, we discovered, the service is FINE, and the food will land THIS superb establishment on your “visit...