About 10 minutes into lunch at Legendary Spice this past weekend, the missus turned to the rest of us and said, you know, this might actually be the best Sichuan restaurant in the Twin Cities. We were dining with friends who are core members of our Grand Szechuan crew and none of us could quite muster up a rebuttal. The truth is both restaurants are very good indeed. But we eat at Grand Szechuan very often and have developed a deep familiarity with their menu. This familiarity, tended over more than a decade, has bred love, not contempt; but it is true that Legendary Spice’s somewhat different repertoire of Sichuan dishes sometimes feels fresher by contrast. This was certainly the case on Sunday when not one dish was less than excellent. Here are the details.
We arrived a little after noon to find the restaurant not very full. There was one large group at the end of the dining room and a couple of other two-tops on the go. And it didn’t get so much busier over the course of our meal. It may be that Sunday lunch is not a busy time; more likely, they do a lot of delivery business via the apps. We were seated at the same narrow table we’d got at our dinner there earlier this year. One of my petty complaints at that meal was having to peruse the menu and order via tablet. This because, as you’ll see below, they have a very large menu; and on the tablet, which only shows a few things per screen, it’s very hard to keep track of things as you try to put together an order. Accordingly, on this occasion I was happy to see a stack of physical menus on the table as well. We used one of those to make our list and ordered via the tablet (you can also order through your server).
What did we get? A bunch of things to share. Annoyingly, none of the appetizers/small plates came out first—but that’s a common issue at Grand Szechuan as well; we have to remember to start ordering in waves here as well, and not everything together. First out were the Eggplant in Garlic Sauce, Sichuan Green Beans and Sole Fillet with Mapo Tofu Flavour. The eggplant and green beans were excellent but did not displace the fish/mapo tofu as our favourite dish at Legendary Spice. I remember that when we ate at the original incarnation of the restaurant—back when it opened as Lao Sze Chuan (now a separate restaurant)—we had not been impressed with the regular mapo tofu. I guess we should try it again at some point but it’s probably never going to happen: this fish version is just too good.
Next to arrive were the two starters and two more large dishes. We’d got the Cucumber Salad with Fresh Garlic and the Pig Ear, Szechuan Style to kick things off. They were appreciated even in the middle of the meal. With them arrived our other favourite dish at Legendary Spice, the Beef with Cauliflower Dry Pot and the Legendary Dry Chilli Chicken, which we quite enjoyed as well. The last dish to arrive was the Sliced Beef in Golden Spicy Sour Soup: potato starch noodles, mushrooms, cloud ear fungus, beef slices and much else besides float in a vinegary soup that is a great antidote to the heat elsewhere on the table. By the way, they offer free, unlimited rice with the meal.
They have a large selection of bobas and juices and smoothies. The boys got one each, as they always do: one mango smoothie and one pineapple smoothie. They enjoyed them again.
For a look at the restaurant, the voluminous 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 friendly and on top of things. For parties of six and more, they add an 18% service charge. With that charge and tax, the total came to just about $200, or just about $33/head for the six of us. But looking at the leftovers we took home, it was food for at least eight people, so the effective per head price was closer to $25. Either way, a very good value for an excellent meal.
I will say that unless you are seated in the smaller curtained-off room that we were in at our first meal here in 2018, it’s not very easy to eat at Legendary Spice in a large group that is sharing things. This is both because it’s a pain to pass things back and forth over a long table (as opposed to the large round tables with lazy susans at Grand Szechuan) and because while the crockery Legendary Spice serves their food on is attractive, most of it is larger than it needs to be and takes up a lot of room on tables which are already quite narrow. (In the attractive but unwieldy category are also their extra-long chopsticks.)
Some of you may be wondering, given the opening of this report, whether we are ready to switch our allegiance from Grand Szechuan to Legendary Spice. The answer is easy: no. For one thing, just as there are many dishes on Legendary Spice’s menu that are not on Grand Szechuan’s, there are also many dishes we love at Grand Szechuan that Legendary Spice does not have. For another, there’s still the question of distance: a meal at Legendary Spice adds 40 minutes to our Grand Szechuan round-trip. But most importantly, we have history with Grand Szechuan: it feels like home when we are there. Relationships with restaurants are about more than just food. We will probably start eating more often at Legendary Spice but it will not be because we’ll start eating less often at Grand Szechuan.
Alright, what’s next from the Twin Cities? No set plans yet for this weekend but I want to get to a new Lao place in St. Paul that Jim Grinsfelder alerted me to a few weeks ago. Hopefully, that will happen. Before that posts, however, I’ll have a few more Delhi and Seoul reports.
Howdy. Over the past six years or so I’ve ordered delivery from Legendary Spice at least half a dozen times (have never eaten in). The one dish that’s we order nearly every time for at home is their Stir-fry Eggplant with Ground Pork. When the lady and kiddo aren’t involved, I love the Dry Chili Chicken. The few American Chinese Classics I’ve tried out of curiosity have been a mixed bag, but their Kung Pao Chicken is lightyears away from the typical goopy mess. Here’s a handful I’d recommend (I know you’ve reported on some of them). They seemingly somewhat recently opened a location at the food court in Rosedale Mall that I’m sure I’ll get around to trying
Cucumber Salad with Fresh Garlic
Sour Pickle & Sole Fish Fillet Soup
Cumin Lamb or Beef – Ask for them to really hit the cumin hard. I loved that they weren’t shy with the sliced jalapenos, dried chilis, and onion
Dry Pot Pork Ribs – I’ve had a few of the Dry Pot series, all excellent
Crispy Shrimp with Lemon Sauce – Not sure why I ordered this for delivery, but the flavor was excellent. Someday I do need to get in and try it hot and crisp at the restaurant
Sliced Pork and Dry Bean Curd with Chives
Mike Z
Oops. I meant to say at least a dozen and a half times
It’s interesting that both Legendary Spice and Grand Szechuan have quite lengthy menus, but (it seems) the vast majority of the dishes are very well executed. The traditional advice for restaurants has been that the quality of the dishes varies inversely with the breadth of the menu.
Do you think their high quality is because both of these restaurants specialize in one cuisine rather than attempting to represent multiple provinces of China (or Italy or Mexico)? Or is the kitchen staff just that good?
Both Grand Szechuan and Legendary Spice have non-Sichuan dishes on the menu—Legendary Spice more than Grand Szechuan—and, of course, both also do American Chinese dishes. But the distinction may be that the seeming massive size of their menus is a bit of a mirage as a number of the dishes are iterations of the same sauce/flavours with different proteins and so forth. I also think that the fact that a lot of the dishes involve quick stir-frying makes a difference. Sauces and proteins can be prepped well in advance and it’s not as difficult to finish a greater range of dishes quickly for service. I know that even cooking at home, pulling together a four or five dish Chinese meal is a much simpler and faster affair than an Indian meal of similar size.