Szechuan Mountain House

Dined in here with a group of 4 people on a Saturday evening at 9:30 PM. We checked on the app to get on the waiting list. You have to be 0.1 mile away from the restaurant to be able to do this. We checked in then looked for parking. By the time we got to the restaurant, the table was pretty much ready.

We orders a good variety of items. The food is spicy! We really enjoyed the beef and enoki cabbage soup. Spicy but so delicious. The pork belly and cucumber dish was also surprisingly good with mix of flavors/texture. The ambiance is very nice too.

The restaurant is beautifully decorated. I was here dining in before but didn't write a Yelp review. Recently I bought takeouts and decided to review them.

I bought Beef Sour Soup, La-Zi Chicken (because they didn't have Gong Bo Chicken), and Stir-Fried Chinese Long Beans. I called when they just opened and didn't have many customers, but it still took 30-40 minutes. So I would say it's kinda slow. And I found it strange that they didn't have something as standard as Gong Bo Chicken.

The food was very good, everything was very tasty. The Beef Sour Soup came in a good size tub with plenty of high quality beef slices. And I remember last time we were dining in, the Swing Pork Belly appetizer was really, really good. We kept getting encore!

This is a solid Szechuan restaurant and prices are reasonable. I do recommend them.

Wow! This spot was sooooo good, it was definitely spicy and yes that's in the name but they delivered such a good experience inside. All of the food was perfection and service was amazing. I loved all the dishes and they compliment one another so well. I may have ordered one too many things but we had to try everything!

The interior is so nice and it feels like you're entering a different part of the world when you enter Szechuan mountain house!

Come here with coworker for my birthday. Everything is so great from the atmosphere, service to the food. The food is not that spicy but a bit too much oil. Will definitely return to try more plates. Love the pear chrysanthemums tea the most!

The last day of our NYC visit brought us to Flushing to visit our old friends. To commemorate our visit, they brought us here for lunch. From the beautiful Koi pond to the ornate chinese calligraphy and decorations, Szechuan Mountain House exuded perfection. The dining room is large with spacious tables and chairs. The lighting and dark colors created a peaceful inviting ambiance.

We were a party of 7 so we got a large round table complete with lazy susan. Our hot jasmine tea and plum juice arrived quickly. The Jasmine tea was refreshing. It was my first time trying plum juice and it was very good. We were the newbies so we let our friend Liang do all the ordering.

Okra salad: a nice cold appetizer, okra swimming in a spicy sauce.
Grilled beef ribs: marinated, grilled to perfection, delicious.
Sweet & Sour spare ribs: delicious tangy sauce, delicious ribs.
Gong Bo chicken: its actually pork belly, chili spicy, delicious.
Ma-La Prawn: shell on shrimp stir fried in dried chili and peppercorns, one of my favorites!
Fu-Qi Special: cold dish, beef and tripe slices in a peanut chili sauce, hot, delicious.
Pickled pepper frog: frog meat pickled with braised chili pepper, tasted like chicken.
Fried rice with bacon & szechuan pickles: different, delicious!
Szechuan style fried noodles: delicious.
Sauteed long beans with eggplant: delicious.
Stir fried cauliflower: another one of my favs.
Ma-Po tofu: tofu in chili sauce, spicy, delicious.

We were running out of space on the table to put the dishes. I was quite elated that Liang got to take home all the leftovers so nothing was wasted. Presentation of dishes were exquisite right down to their printed napkins (see photos). Everything was spicy HOT but so good! Yom Yom Yom Yom! Service was attentive and spot on. She kept the water and tea flowing because of all our spicy dishes. Thank you Liang for introducing us to the Szechuan Mountain House experience! This could definitely be a reason to return for another visit!

Szechuan Mountain House remains my favorite Chinese restaurant in New York, and perhaps ever. It never disappoints and has completely changed my standards for all Chinese cuisine, which I realize is unfair. :) The food is just SO GOOD. I especially love their dry fry fish and shrimp dishes as well as their eggplant with long beans and their fried rice with mountain greens. I could eat here every single day and not get tired of it. The folks who work here are some of the sweetest people you'll meet, and they are so attentive and provide excellent recommendations. My husband and I come here at least a few times a month and have recommended it to so many people, including friends in Boston since they are opening a location there. I'm already looking forward to our next visit, which will probably be next week!

The food is great taste , service is fast . Place is clean.
Very good for family and friends .
Definitely coming back for soups !!!!

TLDR: So many years later, I still love SMG. The menu has gotten smaller but still super tasty in such a competitive space.

The issue with most Chinese places it's hard to order many dishes with just two people. So here is my favorite set for two, assuming you can handle your heat.

Szechuan fried shredded eel. Crispy ribbons of tender eel, tossed in peppercorns, chilis. This is tender, it's hot and it is SPICY. If you like eel and you like a f*ck ton of kick; you will love this.

Mapo tofu. Yes - so simple I know but this one is super umami rich. There's bits of beef, it's hot, it's tangy, it's numby. Get extra rice to shovel this into your mouth.

Sichuan long beans. String beans, pork, mushrooms, spicy - you do need some veg for this meal.

Try this recommended set and enjoy!

Recently came back again and loved it! The price is definitely on the higher end, but comparable with nearby places in the plaza area.

Tried the string beans and shrimp, very good!! Service is friendly. Ambiance is nice. If you sit too close to the door, it will definitely get cold during the winter months.

The indoor ventilation is good, considering the open door/air circulation. Very glad to see this place still around after all these years!

My friend and I came for a weeknight dinner last week; there wasn't a queue when we got there around 6ish but when we left (8? or so) there were at least 10 parties waiting, so definitely a popular spot, even outside of weekends. Interior is very nicely outfitted in that increasingly-common 'traditional' Chinese style. Lots of spacious booth seating and overall it's decently spacious.

We of course had to start with the swinging pork belly, which was delicious! The pork was well-cooked, tender, and flavourful; the interleaved slices of cucumbers were impressively thinly sliced and tasted so fresh. The spicy garlic oil was also really fragrant (honestly to a surprising extent), paired perfectly with the lighter pork belly.

We also ordered the mapo tofu - also a great choice! The tofu was just the right softness and the flavour of the chili oil really permeated nicely into the cubes of tofu. It was not *that * spicy, though, which might have been belied by the vibrantly red colour of the oil. Also, the minced beef added a nice depth to the overall flavour and it was super yummy on top of a warm bowl of white rice.

The stir-fried cabbage was possibly the most unexpected star of the meal; I feel like it's kind of difficult (at decent restaurants, at least) to be bad at cooking cabbage, but even so, this dish was Fantastic. The leaves were so well-cooked; tender without being soggy, savoury without being too heavy, and was a great foil as the only non-spicy dish we ordered. It was a tad oily as we got to the bottom of the dish, but nothing too serious.

Finally we had the peppercorn beef. This was a Huge dish, chock-full of tender slices of beef, bean sprouts, some knots of the konjac noodles, and a LOT of peppercorns in a really aromatic, spicy broth. (Although, like the mapo tofu, it was not *that* spicy compared to how much we expected it to set our mouths on fire.) Every ingredient was so yummy, and you could really feel the contrast in numbing 麻 instead of the more prickly 辣 of the other dishes. Super good value, too, I think it was only like $25 for a ridiculous portion of beef.

Overall, it ended up being a little bit too much food for the two of us (probably a perfect amt for 3 ppl!) so def a great value for the price. I am really eager to come again, there were so many interesting/yummy-looking dishes on their menu that I wanted to try, and after this amazing meal, I'm sure that they're all excellent choices for my next meal here!