Mazu Szechuan Cuisine — Restaurant in New York

4.5 of Google rating is 100% overrated

scallion pancake: 2/5

Too greasy and too dry. I don’t know how it’s possible that you find these two things in the same time. The deadly problem is the wacky sweet soya sauce. Scallion pancakes should go with garlic spicy sauce, period.

Hot spicy beef( 水煮牛肉）: 2.5/5

The level of the dish being authentic only comes from the look of it. Taste and smell is just not there at all. Too much tendering powder is used for the meat preparation hence making the juice very muddy. The taste is nothing but salt, not enough various spices there. This dish is a very important benchmark for any Sichuanese cuisine, if you mess up this one, you are basically just a scammer cooking with no soul/respect for the cuisine. Yes I can see where this is coming from, a lot of adaptation to white people’s taste.

Thousand spicy chicken (辣子鸡）： 1.5/5

This dish originally come from Guizhou province and it’s famous for its spiciness. The dish from this restaurant is just so wrong in so many possible way: 1. Almost no pepper (and therefore not really spicy at all); 2. Only salty taste and nothing more; 3. Chicken is just lame: the chef took the shortcut of dipping the meat into breadcrumbs, making the texture sooooo wrong (not chewy at all), and soooo greasy. The chicken inside just taste wrong. In short, if you are a Chinese foodie hoping to get some home flavor, don’t come here. It’s 100% adapted to white people’s taste and lost almost all the originality of how Sichuaneze cuisine should be. AVOID AT ALL COST.

Ambiance: it’s literally depressing - it’s like 80s 90s disco in the mist of bareness/recessed town, not the vibe I’m looking...

So, I’m in NYC hanging out with a friend and preparing for my excursion to Tanzania. We felt like Szechuan. So, my friend, pulled up Google Maps and selected Mazu, which had the most stars. Mistake number one!

We started out with the spring rolls were very mushy. The spring rolls were not flaky or crispy. Clearly,, the veggies were an afterthought. I shared my feedback with the server. Nobody cared. On to the next dish—I guess.

The restaurant was not crowded. Service was at a snails pace and I was never under the impression that ensuring we had a stellar dining experience was the goal. We were just there and that’s exactly what it felt like.

I ordered the only salmon dish on the menu. The dish wasn’t interesting enough for me to remember the name. The “block” of salmon was stiff as a board and very low quality for $25 I paid for it. There was a reddish sauce drizzled on top. The sauce lacked flavor and tasted as if it came from a bottle.

In sum, the food here is not good at all. If you are looking for “safe” places to eat in New York like TGI Fridays or Pizza Hut, this is your spot. I’ve eaten better quality food at lesser prices in suburban strip malls. The food here lacks creativity and immigration. My recommendation is to save your money and stay far away from this...

Came here with a group of friends for the dim sum brunch and everything was so good. Im honestly so happy to have found such a good Szechuan place in the sea of bars and American food on the same street. Service was amazing, our waitress was super attentive and incredibly friendly. I felt bad the tables were so small since as were having a hard time fitting all the shared plates on one surface, but she made sure to always come by and clear anything we finished off the table right away.

Highly recommend the sesame noodles off the regular menu if you’re into Szechuan peppercorns, it’s one of the few places I’ve seen that actually uses them in their sesame noodle dish. The cocktail pitchers were also really good, I recommend the piña colada mimosas since they’re the perfect drink for a sunny day.

Really looking forward to ordering dinner / takeout here in the near future. I’ve been looking for a go-to Chinese/Szechuan takeout place with fresh, high quality ingredients and I’m thinking I found the perfect place. I also noticed them have general tso tofu which not many places in the neighborhood offer, so that’s definitely going to be on my next order!

Thank you for such a wonderful brunch, can’t wait...