During the Thai dinner at Bangkok Garden, I remember having a conversation with Keith, Maureen, and Mary about the state of Chinese food within the District. With the construction of the Verizon Center pretty much ending Chinatown as an actual ethnic enclave, authentic Chinese food in the District is hard to come by (though very authentic Taiwanese food can be found in Rockville, MD and good to decent dim sum in Wheaton and Silver Spring, MD).
But, for whatever reason, authentic Sichuan cuisine is the one exception to this rule. Recently, I went to the food court in 1825 I St NW (the Dickstein Shapiro building) to the Sichuan Express, which primarily sells Americanized Chinese by the pound ($5.95 per/lb. I believe). But, they have a portable white board that has eight different noodle soups. I ordered the shredded pork with turnip noodle soup while my friend ordered the Eight Treasure Soup. What we got were two deeply savory soups with really interesting pickled vegetables on the side. While my soup was primarily seasoned with sesame oil and lightly stir-fried vegetables and pork, my friend's had an interesting chili oil to dress his soup with some spicy stir fried meats as well. Two other soups we saw that looked particularly good were the mapo dofu soup (with sichuan peppercorn, I believe) and a beef stew soup that my friend said looked identical to a hugely popular soup from Vietnam (he was born in Vietnam).
The one issue I had with the soups were that they were very salty. I wouldn't suggest finishing the broth. But, when eating the noodles and the mixed vegetables and meat, the saltiness works.
The steamed pork buns we had were nice. They primarily had savory soup dumpling fillings rather than the more familiar char siu BBQ pork filling. Worth a try.
Basically, Sichuan Express is the only stand in the food court with a line snaking around it. The people in the line are 90% Chinese. But, when you order the soup, you are allowed to skip the line and order directly to the cashier. I urge you to do that if you choose to eat here. Personally, I do not understand why the Chinese people order the buffet food because it looks like an Americanized horror show of confected General Tso's chicken, but people do. Please, don't follow suit.
Two other places I like are Sichuan Pavilion on K St. and Great Wall Szechuan House on 14th.
More Chinese people go to the Sichuan Pavilion and they always order the dan dan mian (spicy noodles), the steamed pork belly with preserved vegetables, and the chicken with hot dry pepper. The mapo dofu also looks legit, festooned with sichuan pepper corn. I have had less success with other dishes, so you have to order carefully from this menu.
Great Wall Szechuan is more Chinese food for hipsters, and many of my Chinese friends are lukewarm about it, but I found their mapo dofu to be extremely fiery AND numbing (the ma la sensation one can only get from sichuan peppercorn). Basically, ordering from the "ma la" section of their menu is a safe bet.
I suggest people give these places a try (though the best Sichuan is apparently Sichuan Pavilion in Rockville, MD and/or Hong Kong Palace in NoVA...and yes, it is weird for a Sichuan restaurant to name itself after Hong Kong, but the actual Chinese name for the restaurant is supposed to be different).
But, for whatever reason, authentic Sichuan cuisine is the one exception to this rule. Recently, I went to the food court in 1825 I St NW (the Dickstein Shapiro building) to the Sichuan Express, which primarily sells Americanized Chinese by the pound ($5.95 per/lb. I believe). But, they have a portable white board that has eight different noodle soups. I ordered the shredded pork with turnip noodle soup while my friend ordered the Eight Treasure Soup. What we got were two deeply savory soups with really interesting pickled vegetables on the side. While my soup was primarily seasoned with sesame oil and lightly stir-fried vegetables and pork, my friend's had an interesting chili oil to dress his soup with some spicy stir fried meats as well. Two other soups we saw that looked particularly good were the mapo dofu soup (with sichuan peppercorn, I believe) and a beef stew soup that my friend said looked identical to a hugely popular soup from Vietnam (he was born in Vietnam).
The one issue I had with the soups were that they were very salty. I wouldn't suggest finishing the broth. But, when eating the noodles and the mixed vegetables and meat, the saltiness works.
The steamed pork buns we had were nice. They primarily had savory soup dumpling fillings rather than the more familiar char siu BBQ pork filling. Worth a try.
Basically, Sichuan Express is the only stand in the food court with a line snaking around it. The people in the line are 90% Chinese. But, when you order the soup, you are allowed to skip the line and order directly to the cashier. I urge you to do that if you choose to eat here. Personally, I do not understand why the Chinese people order the buffet food because it looks like an Americanized horror show of confected General Tso's chicken, but people do. Please, don't follow suit.
Two other places I like are Sichuan Pavilion on K St. and Great Wall Szechuan House on 14th.
More Chinese people go to the Sichuan Pavilion and they always order the dan dan mian (spicy noodles), the steamed pork belly with preserved vegetables, and the chicken with hot dry pepper. The mapo dofu also looks legit, festooned with sichuan pepper corn. I have had less success with other dishes, so you have to order carefully from this menu.
Great Wall Szechuan is more Chinese food for hipsters, and many of my Chinese friends are lukewarm about it, but I found their mapo dofu to be extremely fiery AND numbing (the ma la sensation one can only get from sichuan peppercorn). Basically, ordering from the "ma la" section of their menu is a safe bet.
I suggest people give these places a try (though the best Sichuan is apparently Sichuan Pavilion in Rockville, MD and/or Hong Kong Palace in NoVA...and yes, it is weird for a Sichuan restaurant to name itself after Hong Kong, but the actual Chinese name for the restaurant is supposed to be different).