Sichuan Home — Restaurant in San Francisco

We decided on this place with a coin flip and I couldn't be happier with our luck! I started off with the hot and sour soup. Usually hot and sour is pretty much the same everywhere you go, but that is NOT the case here. It was peppery and had what I think were bits of super soft ginger in it, absolutely delicious. You get a pretty hefty portion for $8, more than enough for 2. My boyfriend ordered the Szechuan style chicken, which was fried to perfection and you really got the chili flavor coming through in the batter. I ordered the beef and pickled peppers... again, beef was cooked perfectly, it was super tender and the peppers were a lovely balance of sour and spicy. It also had some nice chunks of garlic in it, which I love. We had a pot of complimentary hot tea on the table as soon as we sat down, which had a sort of medicinal, slightly bitter flavor. I'm pretty sure it's some sort of digestive aid because we ate a LOT more than we thought we would be able to. We figured for sure we had ordered too much. I'd love to know what kind of tea it was but the only woman who was working front of house didn't speak much English at all (she knew "beef" and "chicken", but we had to point out which specific dishes we wanted), all she could tell me was that the tea was Chinese lol. She was super sweet, though! She brought out small bowls of complimentary dessert soups as well... again, I have no idea what it was and I didn't even bother to ask. But it was only mildly sweet (I'm not a huge fan of sweets so that's a plus for me). I'm torn between being glad and sad I don't have this restaurant in Austin because I would spend/eat way too much on it. As far as another reviewer fussing about "atmosphere", I don't know what kind of chandeliered buffet style place they were expecting... the place is small and cozy (less than 15 tables), lined with mirrors that make it feel a little more open, and has a lot of pretty Asian prints on the walls. It's definitely a "hole in the wall" kind of restaurant, and the food is amazing. The menu is extensive and I wish I had more room in my stomach to try more of it. For those who like more adventurous foods, they do have entrees with things like tripe, frog legs, pig brains, and lots of other stuff.

Can't recommend this restaurant enough and I hope they stay open and profitable for a...

We had visitors from Canada who loved Chinese food. We searched for a Chinese restaurant and we found Sichuan Home with good reviews, but the restaurant opens at 5pm. It was 3pm when we felt hungry for lunch. We searched more for a different Chinese restaurant. None of the others had good reviews or the type of Chinese we were looking for. So, we decided to do another activity and wait till 5pm to eat at this restaurant. We finally sat down inside. The menu had good selection. The menu also was neatly categorized with the type of dishes. We had 4 main dishes: Lamb, chicken in Sichuan pepper, spicy fish and herb spice , and a vegetarian option called Dry mushroom. The food came in less than 5 minutes 🤔. I honestly don’t know how they prepared it so fast. Those 4 dishes needed to cook. Most likely they were already cooked and ready to serve.

My mushroom pieces were too big and leathery. When I asked for knife to cut to smaller pieces. They said the didn’t have a knife! They ended up bringing scissors😳. I didn’t like that, but I had to let her cut the big mushroom pieces so I can hold them with the chopsticks and put them in my mouth without having a full mouth or mushroom ends dangling from my mouth! The spicy breaded chicken was like orange chicken. We all agreed that the chicken needed salt. So we asked for salt. The waiter grabbed the dish from our table and brought it back very salty! It was not good before and not good after. The spicy fish, which came on a gas cooktop next to our table looked delicious, but the fish was possibly frozen fish. You would think that having fish at a restaurant next to the ocean would serve fresh fish from the sea, but that was not the case. Bottom line, the only fish that we all agreed was good, fresh, and tasty was the lamb.

They also brought sweet rice pieces on the house. The service was very good. The waiter might also be the cook, but I’m not sure. We were the only customer then another couple came in and finished before us. Would I go back again? I don’t think this is the best Chinese restaurant in town. So I’ll try something...

We were craving some good Sichuan food and went to Sichuan home. We all liked it very much. More than the food, the service was excellent. We tried many different dishes and they were all good.

Minced chicken & corn soup: forgot to take a picture of this. It tasted good with a soothing taste.

Chef's special boiling fish stew: few of us in our group wanted it spicy and the others wanted it medium spicy. They accommodated us by bringing a pot with 2 sides. One side spicy and the one medium. It was really good. But it didn't have the Sichuan pepper numbing taste. And I would have preferred the spicy soup to have been even more spicy 😊

Eggplant & minced pork with garlic sauce: the lady who served us suggested this dish and so we had to order it. It was so tasty. We all loved it. Especially that garlic sauce was awesome.

Sichuan style fried fish: this was awesome as well. The dish had some type of Chinese crackers.

Mapo tofu: I don't like tofu. But this tofu was tolerable for me and the sauce was good 😊

Dan Dan noodles: this was also really good.

Finally to the service: The people who served us were really really friendly. So helpful. They even offered us two free desserts. First one was a sweet rice pudding kind of dish. It was mildly sweet and good. The second one was fried rice cake (kind of like mochi) with peanut powder and sweet sauce. She even poured additional sauce on top of it while we were eating , saying it will be tastier with more sauce. We were really impressed with the service

The fish stew was a huge dish and we asked them to pack the leftover. We found out only the next day while rehearing it that , they had drained all the soup and just packed the fish and vegetables. So it was really bland. I was really looking forward to it and got disappointed. This is the only disappointment (and hence reduced one star). Otherwise , we were all really impressed with...