Would love to check it out, but I broke my hip a week ago, so can’t drive, and it’s too far for delivery. Desperately seeking review of Three-Pepper Chicken and West Lake Beef Chowder.
Is Jin Li still truckin’ along?
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SO sorry to hear about your hip, Evelyn!
Wow I didn’t get food from them, I can tell you that Jinli was open when I was at the Asian market on Tuesday.
My household is imploding from ‘Sichaun Cottage changed owners’. I hope it stays good.
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So, kept the chef and changed the owner?
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Evelyn - I’m so sorry to hear of your injury. I hope you’re healing well. As I have plenty of time these day’s I’d be happy to act as your delivery person.
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This is what I’m HOPING…
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Kept Chef, changed ownership, sr management retained, middle management released and lower management working remotely odd / even days of the week to be specific.
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Oh no, Evelyn! I’m so sorry to hear that! Let Mark pamer you, and I hope you are on the mend quickly!
We have been getting takeout since the management change and it has been reliably good. They actually improved the egg rolls: the new ones are bigger and have pork in them. The old ones were small and terrible.
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Question - Beef in hot oil vs Fish in hot oil.
So we haven’t ordered from Sichuan Cottage for a long time and this is first time since the change of owner.
Fish in hot oil is our favorite dish but the last weekend we got Beef in hot oil instead of Fish because we had eaten tons of fish previous night. We were expecting the beef in hot oil to be similar to Fish in hot oil but what we got with something not nearly as spicy as the fish version and with a lot less veggies. I am hoping that it is just because the beef version is different and not that they changed the way the make things.
PS. The beef dish is still good but not as spicy with barely any numbing action; just not what we expected.
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Haven’t had either dish since the change over. But I’ve found the spice level to have slightly been lowered on other dishes (unless its my imagination).
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Ordered takeout/pickup from SC on-line tonight for dinner…hadn’t been there in quite a while due to various distractions so the first thing I noticed was that the dining room area had been reconfigured to handle pickup orders rather than the traditional table dining setup I recalled from previous years’ evenings out. My wife wanted something “light” so she chose the {steamed rather than fried} chicken with mixed vegetables and sauce on the side from the so-designated ‘diet’ section of the menu…it was just what she sought…the meat and vegetables were both cooked nicely and the sauce was delicious all in all making for a very appetizing selection. Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed my picks of chicken w/cashews along with sesame chicken and plenty of rice and a bowl of egg drop soup which included a dumpling or two. We both followed up with the provided packages of fortune cookies without which no Chinese food (true legacy Szechuan and/or Americanized) would of course seem complete! The total for everything was a quite fair approx. $35.00 including tax which yielded tonight’s first-rate “fun” casual dinner out on the screen porch in the pleasant weather [a definite contrast to the turbulent stormy Thursday late afternoon and night here in western Monmouth County] along with tomorrow’s anticipated leftovers. Finally, even though their business was obviously brisk, kudos to Sichuan Cottage staff and mgmt. for the very pleasant and efficient way our order was taken and correctly fulfilled including one or two minor special requests. I’m glad that we were able to conveniently and flavorfully give our stove and dishwasher a night off.
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If my memory serves me right, the fish and beef are the same other than protein. Maybe it was an off day? I guess you can always ask for it extra mala.
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We finally got back to Sichuan Cottage, and picked up food for a couple of days after my cataract operation on Tuesday. And so I discovered that their menu has changed again (though not much). I checked only a few sections (authentic, noodles, and Thai), but a general observation is that prices have gone up a dollar on most main dishes.
Specific changes include dropping Chinese Bacon with Leek, Tea Smoked Duck, Braised Whole Fish with Hot Sichuan Bean Sauce, Salt & Pepper Shrimp (in shell), “Fire Pepper Fatty Sausage” (translated by me), another untranslated dish, and and Lamb Stew Chinese Herbs in Hot Pot, as well as the entire “Little Thai” section. There were a few additions to noodles and vegetables, though: Spicy Noodle Soup (Jong Bond), Pa Thai (moved from the now-defunct “Little Thai” section), and Stir-Fried Green Vegetables.
It’s still take-out only. They have moved their cash register to face the door rather than be next to it, and they have boxes of sauce packets, fortune cookies, and plasticware, from which you take what you need. (Hopefully, this means less waste, particularly of plastic.)
We got the Spicy Braised Beef Soup Noodle in Hot Oil for today–okay, but the beef was too fatty/gristly for my taste. (Mark liked it, though.) For later in the week are the ever-popular (with me, anyway) Three Pepper Chicken, Double Sauteed Pork, and Dan Dan Noodles.
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Thanks for the update! Very anxious to hear how your go-to dishes are later this week! Hope your surgery went well.
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I forgot to mention that they also renumbered the current dishes, so if you tend to order by number, you may be in for a surprise.
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THAT’S important!!
Hadn’t been in a while, but we are going to a pot luck tomorrow and rather than try to make my own Spicy Cold Noodle with Sesame Sauce, I figured I would just pick up Sichuan Cottage’s, and a container of West Lake Beef Chowder while I was at it. Also got Three-Pepper Chicken, Mongolian Beef, and Thai Red Chicken Curry, the latter for the first time. The curry was good, but not really spicy, and certainly not Thai spicy, nor as spicy as when I make it at home with Maesri curry paste.
As for the Three-Pepper Chicken … in ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD, the leader of the theater company says, “We’re more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can’t give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They’re all blood, you see.” For me, Three-Pepper Chicken is compulsory.
Oh, and prices have gone up again, even over what is on the menu scan on their web page. Main dishes haves gone up by $1, and the soup by $0.50. The Noodles are the same, but I suspect a $0.50-$1 increase is probably accurate for most of the items. They are still take-out only, but they haven’t sold the furniture yet. 
With tip, ours came to $75, and we have at least two meals for the two of us (possibly three), two dishes for the pot luck, and 3 or 4 extra cups of brown rice. Still a bargain!
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Back open for indoor dining. No longer take out only.
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Indoor dining is open, but when I was there yesterday (Saturday) at 12:30, it was totally empty. This made me think to remind people to tip on take-out (which is what I was getting), because if the restaurant is doing dine-in, there is presumably a server there, but if no one is actually eating in, that server isn’t getting any tips unless people tip on take-out as well.
And in good news, the prices have held steady for the last year–what we got charged for our five items were the prices listed in the menu I picked up last November.
(The Shredded Beef and Hot Green Pepper seemed hotter than usual. I don’t know if that’s intentional, or just the luck of the draw on peppers.)
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