You have been disconsolate, wondering if I would ever post a Twin Cities restaurant report this week. I apologize: it’s been a very hectic week and a half and I just did not have time to get it ready to post on schedule on Wednesday, or even yesterday. But dry your eyes, tell your emotional support team they can go home: here I am now with my third report on a meal at Legendary Spice, probably Minneapolis’ best Sichuan restaurant. Now, you’re probably wondering how this can be my third review of Legendary Spice when there’s only one other review with its name in the title. That’s because when they opened, it was under the name Lao Sze Chuan and I first reviewed it as such. After a year or so the ownership split and what was Lao Sze Chuan became Legendary Spice—though the menu did not change. Meanwhile, a new restaurant named Lao Sze Chuan opened not too far away. We have not yet been to that new incarnation of Lao Sze Chuan (which, I believe, has the same menu as Legendary Spice). At some point I’ll redress that oversight; here now is my report on our dinner at Legendary Spice this past weekend.
We had dinner with a special visitor. The one and only Sku (a legendary conceptual artist) was in town on some family bidness and as he was based in the U of M area, it was there we planned to meet for dinner. As it turned out, Legendary Spice was just a hop, skip and jump from where he was putting up. And this time we managed to figure out how to get into the free parking lot located right next to the restaurant. It’s not complicated: it looks like it’s closed but the gate opens when you approach it with your car.
We were a party of six and were seated right away at 6.30 pm on a Saturday night. They were busy enough as the evening went on, though it seemed like they might have been doing as much takeout business, with a number of app service delivery people waiting for pickup all through the evening. The space is still as attractive as it was on our first two visits—though the large mural on the wall in the dining room has changed. It’s probably the most attractive of the Sichuan restaurants in the metro. Another change since our last visit is that the copious menu is now available only via a tablet that you also use to order. This means that if you are dining in a group, you’re not all going to have menus. Of course, I run a benevolent dictatorship and friends dining out with me in “family-style” situations rarely bother with menus anyway but in this case it’s also annoying because the menu is so large (I only took a few pics of it). When you’re scrolling through screen after screen of pictures of dishes it’s hard to keep track of the ones that look appealing. With some assistance from Sku, however, I managed to put together a reasonable order for a party of 10.
What did we get? The smaller plates included the following: Sliced Beef Maw, Szechuan Style (which appears to be their take on Couple’s Beef); Szechuan Green Bean Jelly (marked as a Saturday special at the table); and Never Forget Chicken (bone-in poached chicken dressed in a hot-sweet-sour sauce). All were very good. These were followed by: Sole Fish with Mapo Tofu Flavour; Lamb with Pure Cumin, Beef with Cauliflower, Dry Pot; Legendary Shrimp with Garlic and Chilli Pepper; and Dong Po Pork Hock. The standouts here in my opinion were the fish with mapo tofu flavour (which we’d enjoyed a lot at our previous visit as well), the lamb and the beef. But all the dishes were very good. The shrimp, by the way, is head-on and fried to a crisp. Oh yes, an order of the classic stir-fried green beans on the side. That plus rice and tea closed out our order.
For a look at the restaurant, part of the menu, and everything we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much it all cost and to see what’s coming next.
Service was decent enough—that is, once we figured out that we needed to use a command on the tablet to get a server to come to the table. Price? With a couple of sodas and the included 18% service charge (for groups of 6 and more), the total came to $233. We took a lot of leftovers home (in a very bespoke takeout bag) but even if you say it was enough food for just two more people, the effective per head total would have been short of $29. Which is just a great deal for the quality and quantity (portions were very generous).
As I say at the end of every report on a meal at Legendary Spice, we really should come back more often than we do. Yes, it’s an additional 20 minutes each way over our drive to our beloved Grand Szechuan in Bloomington, but Legendary Spice’s menu is quite different and we really should explore more of it. If you have, and if there are other dishes you’d recommend, please write in below. And also let me know if Lao Sze Chuan is worth it. The real reason we’ve never been is that I heard from a few people several years ago that it was not worth it. But maybe that’s changed. Let me know as well if you’ve been to the new Chinese place that’s apparently doing a la carte dim sum.
Since we recently moved to Florida, this restaurant we probably miss the most. I am jealous. A couple of our fave dishes were the green bean jelly Sichuan style salad, the cold kelp salad and the Sichuan boiled beef (we sometimes got this one to go and I swear it came in two full quart containers and lasted a week! It was also our neighbor’s favorite.)
PS, the restaurant scene in Sarasota can best be described as non-descript. The seafood is quite plentiful and well executed though.
Ah, I did not realize you had migrated.
If the drive time was equal to Grand Szechuan, would you eat at GS or LS or alternate between them for variety?
Probably 2:1 GS:LS. But I fully grant that long-time allegiance to Grand Szechuan has something to do with that. At any rate, do need to explore more of the Legendary Spice menu.
Not disconsolate, just annoyed, and slightly bored.
Great review, though. I appreciate your coverage of the way-too-small TC Sichuan scene.
Way too small or larger than we could hope for? Or both?
Szechuan Spice has regrettably closed but we have Grand Szechuan and Legendary Spice, both of which are really very good. A step below is Tea House. Another step below that, Szechuan in Roseville. Plus Lao Sze Chuan (still an unknown quantity for me) and the Little Szechuan hotpot operation in St. Paul (which also has non hot-pot items on the menu). That’s not bad for a metro with not the largest Chinese population. I guess we have the mainland Chinese students at the U to thank for this.
Fair enough. I’ve eaten at most of these places.
But, a couple comparisons: I’ve lived in Research Triangle (NC) and Pittsburgh, which are comparable in overall population, and probably Chinese student and migrant populations, yet they both seem to have a much wider and interesting selection of Szechuan places.
But you’re better informed than me (albeit annoying).
I’m a big fan of the blog. Thanks for all the time you put into it.
Those are interesting comparisons. As per Wikipedia—yes, I know, not the most solid resource for census data—while the Twin Cities metro shows up at #21 for Chinese-American populations >20,000, neither the Research Triangle nor the Pittsburgh metro do. However, Pittsburgh, Raleigh and Durham all show up in the top 30 list for large cities with significant Chinese-American populations, whereas neither Minneapolis nor St. Paul do. Which might mean that the Chinese population in the Twin Cities metro is widely dispersed around the suburbs, making for a less centralized economic/restaurant zone. Of course, it may also mean that there are Chinese restaurants—Sichuan or otherwise—in the suburbs that cater to this population which you and I don’t know about.
There’s also the question of the split of first-gen vs. second/third/fourth-gen populations. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Research Triangle has a much larger population of recent Chinese immmigrants. And Pittsburgh, with both the Univ. of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon—plus a lot of other smaller places—might have a more sizable population of recent arrivals too.
Which are the good Sichuan places in Pittsburgh though? The older son of one of our usual dining crew moved to Pittsburgh recently and he’d love the intel.
As for unheraleded chinese restaurants in the suburbs: Hip Sing BBQ & Seafood – Food delivery – Brooklyn Center – Order online Was an interesting meal. It’s a long way from Northfield and not particularly Sichuan.