Chengdu Spicy Restaurant

My first attempted visit to Chengdu Spicy Restaurant didn’t go as I had planned what else is new?. I’ve been wanting to try this little restaurant located at the corner of Wilson and Kingsway for a while now so I made a point to visit earlier this year. Unfortunately, I relied on the hours that were listed on Google they didn’t have a website that I could find and arrived just past 11:30am only to find that they were closed and the hours they were displaying in their shop said they open at noon Mondays-Friday. So, after reporting the new hours on Google, I headed to another nearby restaurant and waited for my next attempt to try out Chengdu. Finally, in early April, I managed a successful visit. Now, first things first… “Spicy” is right in their name so I knew to expect that most of their dishes would/should be spicy. If you don’t like spicy food… probably best to just avoid this place. You know that it’s a spicy restaurant when they give you a free appetizer that’s drizzled with chili oil. The shredded cabbage had a nice crunch to the bite and I can only imagine that the cabbage would have been good to cut down the spice level of the other dishes if they didn’t drizzle chili oil over the cabbage. But if you like spicy food, this is a nice touch. I wound up ordering the Chengdu House Special Tan Tan Noodles $6.99 which is a dry-style noodle dish as opposed to a soup noodle and topped with some minced meat, green onions, and sesame seeds. The noodles had a nice chewy, toothsome texture and the peanutty-like sauce on the bottom of the bowl added a mild spice level once you mixed up the noodles. As the waitress had mentioned that the noodles were a small dish, I also decided to try some of their wontons. Originally, I was going to order their House Special Wontons but she said that they weren’t spicy so I ordered their Spicy Wontons in Chili Sauce $7.99 instead. The wonton had a velvety soft wrapper and were swimming in chili oil and topped with green onions, sesame seeds, and garlic. While I found the spiciness of this dish to be a bit one-dimension from the chili oil, they were pretty good. They have a number of wonton and dumpling dishes… it’d be nice to try some of their other varieties to see if they have more flavour. Overall, a fairly good offering here but I think I’ll need to try some of their other dishes to be sure. I did try coming back to this restaurant but I’ve noticed that they aren’t always open when they say they’ll be open. For example, on the weekdays, their sign says they open at noon. However, on more than one occasion, I’ve been here at noon and it’s not open. I’ve seen some people standing outside the restaurant waiting for it to open… I’m almost thinking that those were the people that worked there and they were waiting for someone with a key to show up. In any case, after an aborted attempt to visit where I wound up going to nearby Bubble World, I ordered their Tan Tan Dumplings in Peanut Sauce $7.99. Strangely enough, the sauce didn’t taste much like their tan tan noodles dish. The sauce was a bit spicy from the use of chili oil and had very little peanut flavour. The half moon shaped dumplings were okay but they suffered from the same one-dimensional flavour that their other dishes possess. If you’re a fan of chili oil, you might enjoy the food here… otherwise, the flavours get tired rather quickly. Cash only for totals under $50.

Fast service and really tasty food. If you like spicy/northern Chinese food then give this place a try. Great family style portions at a fair price. I will certainly be returning here.

Our family is from Chengdu so we tried this out. It's definitely delicious however it's just lacking the level of spiciness that we are used to. However we understand that the restaurant has to cater to all people so it can't make everything too spicy. Loved the tan tan noodles though. So authentic.

The flavor was on point but I'm not sure how fresh the food was? If someone told me the food was leftovers I'd say it was the best leftovers I ever had. Is that worth 3 stars? Probably not, but until I try other Szechuan restaurants with matching flavor, 3 stars it is.

Fried rice was lumpy and totally tasteless. My fried rice that I make at home is not very good but it is better than this. Go to another restaurant. The rest of the food wasn't good either, it was just spicy hot. I did not leave a tip because of the awful food. As I was leaving the waitress called me back and asked, "What about my tip?" I replied that the food was terrible. "But you ate everything," she countered. I said, "I ate everything because I was hungry, not because it was good," and walked out before she could say anything else.

A friend invited me for a dinner last night, and it was 3 of us for dinner/hangout instead of 5. My first impression was the ma la spiciness or pungency from this restaurant giving me an instant cough when I first got there. My friend P ordered Combo B $18.00 and Spicy Tan Tan Noodle$7.99 everything tasted identical except for the cold noodle or pudding dessert. Free cabbage was good; it tasted like imitation of Kimchi, but pan fried. It also had strong taste Sichuan pepper. 1 Chilled Noodle or clear sweet pudding I would call it was alright. It had rock sugar flavour and tasted okay. I found it strange to have our dessert coming out first though. 2 Guokui Flatbread with pork liver was dry. I personally like flatbread to be moist and the bum was NOT fresh at all. We asked the waitress to cut Guokui for us; she refused saying the sandwich will break. She didn't bother helping us, but gave us a knife when I asked to borrow one. Don't get Guokui it's gross. The flatbread had a hard texture. 3Chengdu Hot and Sour Vermicelli was fresh. Nothing special on flavour it was just sour and spicy. It seemed like something you can easily make at home. No meat toppings at all, but only had green onions and chopped veggies. 4Tan Tan Noodle $7.99 came out as clumped and that wasn't fresh. It looked like some instant noodle that was left too long and the noodles got stuck together. 5Braised beef noodle was good. It had big chunks of beef, bamboo and some cilantro. Soup was tasty too. Beef chunks were tender. This was only food I personally thought was memorable. Everything we ate together was numbing spicy and all of them tasted similar. Service was nothing special. Avoid this place if you have a sensitive tummy, you could get tummy ache or have your butt on fire, lol. Everything was VERY spicy and left 3 of us feeling numb. Debit and credit accepted over 50$.

Very expensive food that doesnt take nearly as fresh or delicious as the traditional dishes. I'm from Chengdu and I just got back to Canada from Chengdu and I can say that this food was not up to par. The staff were decently nice though. We ordered the Kung Pao Chicken and it was a bit too vinegary. The other dishes were nothing to write home about either.

When I ordered the spicy beef dry noodles I asked if it was spicy and was told no. Well it was so spicy and full of szechuan peppercorns that we had to order the beef fried rice to replace the spicy noodles. When we asked for take out container the cashier told us 50 cents. Okay I agree there are costs involved with non consumables factor them in your food costs.....so bring your own containers if you really want to eat a heaping tablespoons of szechuan pepper at home cause we had to water the noodles down with water yet all i tasted was szechuan pepper and nothing else. Wouldn't be back for sure!

I'm from Szechwan where is the same province that this restaurant comes from. Their chili oil doesn't smell good and is not that authentic. My wife and I had dinner here, and then got diarrhea, and could not go to sleep until 3 AM!!!

Really enjoyed the house dumpling, but I found the spicy wonton to be over peppered and lacking that chili bite with a hint of sweetness. It was almost garlic numbing. Try it for yourself. Needed a greesy coke to wash the after bite down. On second thought I'm outside now having a brown leafer and I'm feeling a brown creeper. Turd burgler alert! Will update if needed. It was about a 6.5 on the ripper scale, tolerable but don't make plans to go out that evening.