Szechwan North — Restaurant in Northfield Township

Wow. Where to begin. Growing up in Northbrook Szechwan North was my favorite Chinese place and being home for the holidays it was one of the first places I wanted to stop. My family has been eating here for over 15 years. My favorite thing on the menu, their crab Rangoon, were pocketed pillows of perfection where you could bite off the good stuff and forget the hard part of their wonton. It was also not sweet like crappy Chinese crab Rangoon. Much to my dismay when they came out, almost no cream cheese and ALL WONTON. Fail. Now let’s talk about the service. I’d consider my family pretty mild mannered when it comes to restaurant speed and etiquette and our food took 2 HOURS. My niece and nephew ordered strawberry smoothies and it took over an hour for them to come out. Appetizers all didn’t come at same time just as kitchen finished. The restaurant was maybe half full. When I say appetizers I’m talking over an hour for 2 egg rolls. When we complained and were about to walk out for McDonald’s the manager said our food was en route and would be on its way. 30 minutes later it came out. On the main dishes, still good, but definitely not the quality it was before. If they say dishes are “bigger” it’s just more veggies. Icing on the cake is that they didn’t comp us one thing or even offer free dessert, and they even added the gratuity for a party of 6 or more (so they included 2 7 year olds). The VERY best thing that happened is they accidentally brought us the wrong dish at one point. It was a fried type chicken of some sort. Since we were STARVING we started to serve it and probably took about 6 morsels. The waiter came out and indicated to us it was the wrong dish and tried to get my sister to put back TWO PIECES OF CHICKEN. Same guy goes back to the kitchen with to-go boxes about a minute later. He boxed that up and gave it to a customer and wanted her to give back her chicken trying to give it to someone else. Our family was in stitches. So sad to see my favorite Chinese place go completely south. It will be a vacant lot like the rest of that strip...

I smelled the food while i was getting my medications at the Walgreens nearby. Smelled amazing! So amazing, once done at Walgreens, I circled back around to see what was the food I was smelling. I went in and got a menu. I had limited funds waiting on payday the next day but after a long day, didn't want to cook. A server by name of Connie assisted me. I ordered the combination chow mein and went to car to wait for it to be ready. My daughter asked if she could have spring rolls. I had $3 cash and like $4 on card. I went in and asked could I order spring rolls with two forms of payment: Pay with cash and rest on card. Connie was not able to figure out how to do it. She first rolled her eyes and shamed me for needing to use two forms of payment. When she couldn't figure it out, I texted a friend to zelle me $5 so I could just pay with card. When she finished the transaction, Connie left, passing me and mumbling her disgust in her native language and I found that to be extremely poor customer service. Judge me when you are not in my face. Times are hard and I was simply trying to feed me and my child. So, based on her behavior alone, I give them a poor review and am contemplating never visiting their restaurant again. However, the food was delicious. So, I'm torn.

Take this review as you will. I opted to write the review in hopes that it is received as constructive criticism to treat everyone with respect despite circumstances. Times are hard. No one should judge another based on what they cannot do. You never know what a person is going through and it can happen to any one of us in a heartbeat. I didn't ask to be laid off for 18 months and finding it hard to find a job. I am not a stereotype. I'm a human struggling and fighting hard to overcome the turn of event circumstances that is currently my life (not by choice). Treat everyone with kindness regardless of any frustration it may...

The only thing longer than the Chinese Wall was our wait last night. On the warmest Christmas Eve in 13 years, our party of ten people had a 6:30 reservation. By 6:42 they seated us; by 7:00 I had to get up, find menus and bring them to the table. By 7:30 they had not taken our order so I wrote down everyone's order (see below), walked over to a waiter (not sure if he was our waiter since no one gave us menus) and told him what we wanted as he entered it in the computer.

Our food didn't arrive until 8:15!!

I'm no fan of Chinese food, but it was surprisingly good. We requested no MSG and light on the oil; I recommend you do the same.

Highlights:

Lamb with cumin was delicious. It was flavorful, tender and well spiced.

Chicken pot stickers. We didn't order them, some other table did, we thought they were bringing them to be nice. By the time we realized they weren't ours, they were in our stomachs.

The Mongolian beef tenderloin was so good I didn't get to taste it; my boys devoured it before it reached our side of the table.

Szechwan string beans were a hit as well.

The dry chili chicken was NOT good. I love hot food, but this was too hot, even by my standards.

The servers were all nice and tried their best, there were just too few of them. I'd give this place four stars for the food. We fed ten people with no alcohol for $230, including tax and tip. The full list of items we ordered is:

Dry chili chicken Szechwan style 402 Cashew chicken no pineapple mushrooms 406 Vegetable eggfu young w tofu 922 Mongolian beef 206 Stir fry sliced duck with baby ginger 427 Kung pao chicken 405 Asian salad 109 Lettuce wraps with chicken 129 Lamb with pure cumin powder 217 Mongolian beef tenderloin 206 Mixed vegetables 608 String beans Szechwan style...