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. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Legendary Spice
Legendary Spice 3 (Minneapolis, MN)
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. Continue reading
Legendary Spice (Minneapolis)
I said at the start of last week’s Twin Cities Metro review that it was and was not my first review of Pho Tempo. Similarly, this is and is not my first review of Legendary Spice. In the case of Pho Tempo it was because the restaurant (attached to Saigon Market) had undergone a renovation, menu makeover and name change since my first review. The story with Legendary Spice is a bit more complicated. They opened in 2017 as a Minneapolis franchise of the Chicago-based Lao Sze Chuan group. It was in that avatar that I reviewed them in 2018. The next year they split from the Lao Sze Chuan group, changing the name to Legendary Spice, now with a link to a Chengdu-based restaurant. They remained in the same space and have many of the same dishes. Back in 2018, we liked our meal fine but, as I said at the end of that review, we didn’t think it was anything that warranted driving a further 20 minutes north past the exit for Grand Szechuan or, for that matter, picking them over Tea House, which is just a minute or so away. This meal, however, was a different story. We liked it a lot more. Continue reading