Hu's Cooking — Restaurant in Houston

Hu's location is excellent if you work for or attend Rice University, or you work at the Texas Medical Center. Sitting along Holcombe Blvd near Kirby Drive, it's pretty easy to get to. What's not so easy is parking. Depending on when you arrive, you may find all the spots in the strip center parking lot in front and on the side filled. Fortunately, there's parking on the side street, Sheridan, which runs parallel to Holcombe and isn't a horrible walk to the building.

Hu's business hours are great for night people. The place keeps hours until 10pm most nights, and 11pm on weekend nights. So if you're craving fried rice or lo mein and it's late, you're in luck.

Once inside, though, the experience went down for me. The main dining area has room for arguably 100 to 120 people, but it's pretty tight. And, indeed, Hu's has no problem accommodating large parties of 6 to 10. I saw three such tables when I went for a recent visit. If you're by yourself as I was, however, you may have a slight wait while they rearrange tables elsewhere in the restaurant.

Regarding atmosphere, Hu's has the feel of a Chinese cafe. There's no background music playing, only the considerable buzz of diners conversing with each other. I have no issues with this, and found it a pleasant change from places that blare the music from speakers or, worse, have flat-screen TV's with sports on.

Part of the reason for the buzz is that the dining area is, frankly, a little bit cramped. Hu's is not the largest place in the world, and they do manage to fit a lot of customers into their smallish space. Aisles (if they can be called that) between tables are narrow, and tables sit pretty close together. I'm more accustomed to larger, more spacious places.

The waitstaff are serviceable enough, when you can find them and wave them over. I didn't find Hu's waitstaff to be the most attentive. I had the impression, on the Saturday night on which I went, that they were slightly overmatched for the crowd they had. (Another place I used to frequent, Shanghai River, had this same serious problem to the point I stopped going there.) It wasn't what I would call a warm, welcoming place, in terms of tone – you came to eat, you eat, you pay.

On to the food. I ordered chicken fried rice with a side order of 4 vegetable egg rolls, and a Diet Coke to wash it down. The rice could have been hotter – it wasn't cold enough to send back, but it should have been warmer (or even hot), and there should have been more of it. The vegetable egg rolls were better in the temperature regard. And if you're hoping for free refills on soft drinks, forget it – Hu's is an establishment that serves such drinks in cans, for some reason. At least they sell the 12-oz cans and not the insultingly short 7.5-oz “mini” cans some places have started to use.

A personal gripe of mine is that Hu's has no soy sauce bottles or pepper shakers on the tables. You have to ask for soy sauce, pepper, any other seasonings. And you won't get a soy sauce bottle, either – you'll get a dipping tray with a passable amount of soy sauce.

The cost of this experience was $25.88. For comparison, at Cafe Ginger – a much better place, in my opinion, and a regular spot of mine – I could get the lunch portion of chicken with vegetables, arguably close to twice the food – with a single (but larger) egg roll – and bottomless Diet Coke for just under 24 dollars ($23.97 to be exact). I feel pretty well fed over there. Not here.

I personally would hand the best-Asian crown for Houston to Cafe Ginger (look them up) – it's a more spacious place, you get more food, it has a much nicer atmosphere that's not as frenetic, the food is served warmer, and the service is more cordial. Hu's Cooking isn't a bad place, but if you're looking for an excellent Chinese experience, this isn't it. If you go, lower your expectations and you'll have a good enough time. You'll be fed, but you may find yourself longing for something more the...

Food: 5/5 This is hands down my favorite Szechuan restaurant in the loop. Strong flavors and spice, especially that "mala" numbing spice that the cuisine is famous for. I'm SO relieved that Hu's Cooking survived the pandemic. The food has always been consistent, and the portion sizes are generous. My boyfriend likes that they also have several Taiwanese dishes on the menu (his favorite is the Three Cup Chicken). My go-to is the Poached Fish in Spicy Sichuan Oil. I've also seen this dish referred to as the "spicy sliced fish" in some other restaurants, but the characters are usually 麻辣水煮鱼. It has a lot of the mouth numbing (but not painful) Szechuan peppercorn spice. For the vegetables, my favorite is the string beans.

Service: 5/5 The wait staff is very responsive in refilling the water and rice even when the restaurant is totally packed. Even the staff who aren't assigned to my table are always quick to pop over if they think I look like I might have a question, and the owner or manager are always walking around to get feedback from guests. Definitely seems like a team-oriented operation.

Ambiance: Loud The atmosphere is very lively and can be pretty loud, especially around dinner time when the restaurant is busy. Maybe not great for a first date since it can be a little difficult to hear the person across the table, but the background noise is perfect when I dine with family and want to avoid awkward silence Lol. Lunch time is probably better if you want to have conversations.

Parking: There's a small lot available, but there's plenty of free street parking in the neighborhood behind the restaurant.

Overall: 5/5 Would definitely recommend this restaurant to anyone interested in trying out Szechuan food.

Edit: Recently went again and got some non-spicy items: the eggplant in garlic sauce, the twice cooked pork, the sweet-skinned duck, and the dan dan noodles. Everything...

We really loved this place. Outside it doesn't look like much, but it's nice inside. We aren't from Houston and there were lots of similar places to choose from. You won't be disappointed here. They do not have sweet and sour chicken which is my kids standard so it was good to mix it up. No kids meals. They assume family style eating as the norm here. The steamed rice comes in a pot for the table. They even brought my toddler a plastic plate and silverware which was so thoughtful!

We had egg rolls, pork dumplings, and sweet and sour pork ribs appetizers. I initially liked the pork ribs (come chopped up in a bowl), but then the meat tasted mostly off. I would not order again. Dumplings and egg roles were good. The dumplings were shaped like potstickers (8). The egg rolls (4) were small and came with dipping sauce.

The food came out super fast and hot, perfect temperature. We had chicken and brocolli, chicken fried rice, and lamb szechuan. The lamb was a two pepper rating and wasn't at my limit, okay for even many kids I think as long as you don't directly eat a pepper. Really not very spicy for someone like my husband. Those were all very delicious. Some places have lower quality chicken, but this was good. We had leftovers to take home. We also enjoyed a pot of tea. I'm not sure exactly which tea, but I thought it was good. My kids like the tea at our usual place back home, but they weren't as keen on this one and I'm not entirely sure why as they seem similar, but perhaps Hu's was stronger?

We would come back in...