Sichuan Impression in Los Angeles

If you like Sichuan food chances are you will love this place. The number of items on the menu is truly impressive . Have not tried them all but from what I have tried the food is excellent. Entrees are kind of pricey but the portions are huge. Also food looks kind of spicy but believe me it does not taste as spicy as it looks. Service is always slow regardless of whether its a weekday or weekend.

Wow this sichuan place is AMAZING. everything we ordered was delicious and had the perfect spice level. i loved the spicy stir-fried beef as well as the pork intestine. the fish soup was also sooo good. great place to grab a meal if you like spicy food!!

Wonderful spicy food with lots of menu options. Hidden local gem. Cucumber salad and shrimp fried rice are amazing.

Food was good, fresh, and spicy with plenty of the numbing spice from the Sichuan peppercorn. Mapo tofu was great, would highly recommend, but very spicy for me (my face starts sweating). Recommend to eat it with white rice. Pickled bamboo shoots were a nice appetizer. The cumin lamb, daikon beef soup, and ribs are good not-spicy alternatives.

I’m giving this place a high rating not solely due to the taste, quality or price, but because of the experience. Never had I tasted Rattan Pepper, a spice with such a numbing/tingling sensation. The Boiled fish with Rattan Pepper is a perfect example of this. I’m not a big fish soup guy, but this is unlike any soup I’ve ever had. You need to try it if you are new to this place.My advice when ordering here is to be bold and adventurous. They offer a lot of things you don’t see on a typical menu, such as frog legs, rabbit and duck tongue to name a few. Make sure you get at least one thing with rattan pepper, like the stir-fried chicken. Everything else I ate was quite good. It all had an element of spice to it, but nothing made me reach for a glass of water.Pricing it quite typical, maybe a bit more then your average Chinese restaurant. That said, this is isn’t your average. You should definitely order family style and share.Give this place a try if you are feeling daring or if you love Sichuan cuisine.

Very authentic Sichuan food, highly recommend it! Not as oily as other Chinese spicy food, but it’s so tasty. Also great service and super clean facility everywhere. Will want to come back again to try more delicious food.

The cold weather is just right for spicy food and Sichuan cuisine is one of the best to try.From Google rating, Sichuan Impression has a branch here with more than 4 stars in average. That would be our choice for sure after 9pm.The place is on 2nd floor within Santa Monica Plaza and all the parking spots are only 10 minutes limit or blocked. We later learned that it was for valet parking. In LA, valet is a very loose term that they just want to take more money out of your pocket and we also dont feel too comfortable someone we dont know has the key and drive our car due to bad experience of losing some cash inside. We end up parking behind the building ourselves. And after we step out, we also dont see the umbrella or the valet guy. I made the right decision to park myself.The Mexican waiter is the best one in there. He is not only cleaning the tables, but also helping take orders, ask whether we need menu (on iPad rather than on our phone) and give us water, napkins, fork and spoon. He is indeed the best one there.The food is good, spicy and flavorful. But the noodle soup I order is using fatty pork like bacon. That is the worst one in my opinion. The meat is not suitable for this dish, I cannot eat it and pack it home.Overall, the food is on pricey side, portion is average, and they are generous in given chills or peppercorn that make the dish flavorful.We may go back again for the tongue paralyzing experience again.

I was extremely annoyed by the meal I had eaten. I have never had such an bad experience before. Objectively speaking, the bullfrog with pickled peppers I ordered for $32 didnt even have more than ten pieces of bullfrog. It was full of bones, and the meat was very small. It was incredibly terrible. Not having more than 10 pieces, I can say that Ive never had such an experience in North America. I feel like I got scammed, and the other dishes were just as disappointing. I informed the front desk that it was for take-out and ordered four servings of rice. They packed them in two boxes together. I dont know how this restaurant manages to cut costs to this extent. Theres nothing more to say—its absolutely terrible. I will never come to this restaurant again. I stopped eating after about 5 minutes and then spent about 10 minutes writing a review to show this all.

Over rated, over hyped, and over priced. Food here is little unique, but nothing to really be impressed about. Really over spiced on some dishes. The servers have some issues that they have to deal with. I dont think I would want to go back here again. Tea was cheap tea bags inside what looks like a fancy tea pot. Dumplings were much better elsewhere. Ribs were okay, nothing extraordinary. The beef soup was disappointing and salty. I thought the collard greens were probably the best. The fries are total rip off. Maybe the Alhambra location is better than here.

OMG, not being exaggerated but I’m obsessed with this restaurant so much!! Most dishes impress me a lot!Boiled Fish with Rattan Pepper: the most tender fish fillet I’ve ever had! They taste very succulent and packed with flavors. It delivers an intensive numbing sensation to my mouth because of the authentic Sichuan pepper.Mao Cai: the soup is the essence of this dish. It’s neither too oily like many other Chinese restaurant’s food, nor too salty. The ingredients bring a lingering fragrance to the dish. Highly recommended.Steamed Pork with Rice Flour: the pork is very juicy, and rice makes pork belly not greasy at all. If I’m not wrong, they also put pumpkin inside. The sweetness of the pumpkin offers the perfect complement to the spices through the richness of the pork belly.Other recommended dishes: Marbled Beef Noodle, Stir-Fried Chili Pork Ribs.Almost came here every week and recommended it to all my friends. Came around 7pm one day and waited for more than one hour to be seated. You know it’s good just by looking at the queue.#favorite Chinese restaurant in LA