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Authentic Sichuan cooking that makes few concessions to Western tastes. The food is copious, spicy, oily and meaty. It’s also frequently quite good, if a little blunter and clumsier than the area’s truly great Sichuanese places. No alcohol; BYOB.
-Guide
Tags:
bestindfw, reviewed2011, bestinchinese
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The first thing I had to do after opening the menu at Royal Sichuan was get out my phone and start Googling things. I mean, I’m good on stuff like winter melon and fish maw and Chongqing chicken. But I’m a little rusty on my Linnaean classifications, so I had no idea what the house special trichiurus haumela might be, let alone the amorphophallus konjac with pickled peppers. The former, it turns out, is ribbonfish, a.k.a. hairtail, the latter a suggestively shaped flower also known as devil’s tongue that produces starchy, edible and apparently tasteless corms. (Full review)
A few of the dishes at this cozy, nicely decorated restaurant that opened last year in Richardson were oversalted and oily, but others were so appealing that Royal Sichuan merits inclusion on this list. To wit: velvety braised eggplant with perfectly cooked prawns, twice-cooked pork (tender slices bathed in a lightly spicy sauce with lots of leeks), dry-fried string beans topped with salty, crumbly pork. Sichuan pepper was conspicuously absent from a recent lunch. No alcohol; BYOB. (Full review)