At the end of my last review of Tea House, the Twin Cities’ OG Sichuan restaurant, I noted that it would likely be less than three years—the time elapsed since the prior review—till we came back to eat there again. Well, that was in the spring of 2018. In my defense, the years of the high pandemic had something to do with many of my review plans/promises of that period not being kept. It’s also true that when we get on Highway 35 to go north for Sichuan food it’s very difficult to not get off at Exit 6 and head to Grand Szechuan instead of driving for another 20 minutes. In the interim, however, Jon Cheng—the Star Tribune’s restaurant critic and one of the few professionals in the area who doesn’t seem to think his main job is to be a booster—named Tea House the best Chinese restaurant in the metro. That was in 2022. We’ve been meaning to get there ever since to see if very dramatic changes had happened since our last visit. Well, we finally got there this past weekend. Here’s how it went.

(A note before we get too far: this review—like my other Tea House reviews—is of the University Avenue location in Minneapolis. The other locations of Tea House have not been affiliated with this one for quite some time now.)

We descended on them for lunch on Sunday. It being Mother’s Day and we being a large party (of nine), I’d made a reservation a few days earlier. This was probably a good move as the restaurant was pretty slammed. It’s an attractive space but cramped at the best of times and with almost every table full we were right up against everyone around us. The front of house and kitchen were quite slammed as well. It took a while to get our orders in—we placed a couple of orders of dumplings while waiting for the last member of our party to arrive and then ordered everything else one he had—and then the food arrived in a somewhat haphazard order after those first dumplings hit the table (soup bowls arrived shortly after the dumplings but the soup itself took almost another 30 minutes to make an appearance, and a cold dish and an appetizer were also among the last to arrive).

The menu seems very large and is in terms of pages; but there aren’t that many items on each page, each one being accompanied by a photograph and in some cases long narratives. The menu notes that photos may not be representative, which turned out to be true in at least one case. The menu is also odd in that it does not list prices. For that you’ll have to scan the qr code on the table and look at the menu online. I suppose they don’t want to have to reprint that whole menu each time they raise prices. But they may as well do away with the menus in that case—the online menu also has the same photos of the dishes and if you have to go back and forth to see how much things cost then what’s the point? Anyway, consulting the prices on the online menu, we placed our order.

What did we get? A lot. (I am going to list things in the ordered sequence but the large gallery below shows them in the order in which they arrived.)

• Mei Po Pork Dumplings. Steamed baos with mildly spicy pork fillings, these were quite nice.
• Xiao Long Bao. I always regret ordering these in the Twin Cities but the ones in the photo looked nice and plump with proper wrappers. Alas, this was a case of photographic inaccuracy. What showed up was 8 limp dumplings with barely any soup in them.
• Szechuan Dumplings x 2. Six to an order, these were quite nice though the dumplings themselves were of the more doughy kind; I prefer the lighter ones at Grand Szechuan and also the more vinegary dressing there.
• Couple’s Beef. A very good rendition of the classic cold Sichuan dish.
• Szechuan Mala Spicy Fries. Should really be had with beer, which none of us were drinking, but we quite enjoyed them anyway.
• Wintermelon Rib Soup. A very mellow and delicate soup of pork rib with thin slices of winter melon. I liked this a lot.
• Pork Eggplant. Ground pork and diced eggplant in a sweet’ish sauce reminiscent of fish-flavour sauce, this was very tasty and very mild.
• Serrano Pepper Beef. A favourite at our previous meal, I quite liked it again as did some others in the group; half the party, however, found it not very interesting.
• Ma Po Tofu. We got this in place of the House Spicy Tofu which we’d enjoyed on our previous visit. It was good; some in the party really liked it. I liked it too but thought it fell quite a bit short of Grand Szechuan’s version.
• Szechuan Green Beans. Very good.
• House Spicy Fish. One of very few dishes that had any appreciable heat, this was very tasty, especially with the Napa cabbage the fish was sitting on.
• Dongpo Pork Hock. We got the spicy version. It wasn’t very spicy but it was very good.
• Sausage Fried Rice. The younger boy asked to try this. It was fine in an anonymous kind of way.

Steamed rice, tea and a couple of Cokes rounded out our order. For a look at the restaurant, the menu and what we ate, launch the very large slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much it all cost and for thoughts on the meal as a whole.

Service was, as I noted, a little harried but good when present. I will note that I asked for all the dishes that should be hot to be made “Sichuan” hot but with the exception of the fish nothing was appreciably hot—and even the fish was not notably hot.

Price? Quite a bit more expensive than back in 2018. How much of this is due to inflation and how much to the positive press, I’m not sure but with the included 18% tip the total came to $338. Counting the boys as one adult diner that comes to $42/head. Compare with $30/head in 2018 (and that included a whole fish dish, which would now have run $65). I’ll also add that the crappy disposable  wooden chopsticks (whose plastic wrappers then floated around the cramped table), chipped tea cups and plastic water glasses are a bit of out of keeping with both the prices and the rest of the attractive decor.

Back to the price: it’s also quite a bit more per head than Grand Szechuan in 2024 (though I am sure rent is cheaper in Bloomington). And I have to say that while this meal too was very good on the whole, it also failed to make a case for ever actively choosing to eat here over Grand Szechuan. Indeed, I have to say that if I was looking for Sichuan food in the neighbourhood I would go to Legendary Spice over Tea House as well. Again, that’s not to say this was not a very good meal. There are non-Sichuan dishes available here that you won’t get at Grand Szechuan or Legendary Spice and that may be a good reason to pick them (though keep your expectations low for the xiao long bao) but when it comes to head-to-head comparisons, Tea House’s renditions fall just a bit short for me. Your mileage may vary.

Alright, I’m off to New Jersey/New York for a few days in the morning. I’ll doubtless have some food reports from there once I’m back. Before any of those post, however, I’ll try to get at least one more Seoul/Busan report out. As to what my next Twin Cities report will be of, I’m not entirely sure. Possibly of another meal at Alma—we went back 10 days ago for a work event and ate the new Spring menu, which is great. Let’s see how it goes.