Latest Reviews
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This restaurant was a great find. I love Sichuan food and so to discover this place in Brick Lane was a must try. The ambiance is very busy full of li…
Miriamzahara
Sichuan Folk
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Service was excellent. The staff were welcoming and helpful. Food was great and lots of choice. Prices are good. Hot pot looked good, although we didn…
Akanksha
Sichuan Folk
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Good Sichuan. I always find it a good sign when a Chinese restaurant is full of Chinese people. A little pricier than most Sichuan's I frequent but th…
Alice Gee
Sichuan Folk
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Sichuan Folk is open for Casual Dining. Sichuan Folk serves Chinese dishes. Incorrect or missing information? Make a report, or claim the restaurant if you own it!Details
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9 Reviews on “Sichuan Folk”
Good Sichuan. I always find it a good sign when a Chinese restaurant is full of Chinese people. A little pricier than most Sichuan’s I frequent but the ambiance is much better than those hole in the wall Chinese places. No tube lighting, but dimmed halogen spots and red paper lanterns. Dark woody decor is thought through. You could bring a date here. Portions are generous.I was a little disoriented that some standard regional dishes were not on the menu. One of my favorites is stir fried aubergine, potato and green pepper but I didn’t see that on offer. Also there was a surprisingly large array of seafood dishes for landlocked Sichuan.Stir fried pea shoots were the highlight of our order. Light, delicate and tasty. Will definitely order that again. Fish fragrant aubergine was good too. Oilier, as a lot of typical Sichuan stir fries are. Maybe a touch sweet for my taste but nice and complex. Our final dish of dry fried cumin lamb was okay, but not the best I’ve had. The variation here was hotter than normal and a touch bitter with the heavy spicing. Nice touch that it was served with fluffy bao buns. Spicy lamb stuffed into slightly sweet bao was a lovely contrast. House wine was 16 a bottle. Dinner for two including wine and some leftovers for lunch the next day, but not service was 56.
I went because I was in the area and had seen the good reviews, otherwise I would have been put off by the dark lighting and decor. Very glad I did. We had the ma po tofu and Szechuan fish which were both full of flavour. Atmosphere-wise it doesn’t really win for me, it just feels a little sparse, but the food is good and not at all pricey.
If you are looking for authentic Chinese food, away from Chinatown this place is it. Tried the hot pot and the produce were fresh. You get two types of soup for your hot pot, spicy or non spicy. You have the option to take up one soup or both. As can see on my pics, the spicy soup is full of Chillies. It has a really nice flavour although if you’re not used to eating spicy food, this can be quiet hot. So glad to make a trip here and the next time, I will be trying their other dishes.
I did warn my co-diners this would be spicy. Most understood me but a couple didn’t really heed my warning… I think they will next time! You leave Sichuan Folk with a very satisfying chilli induced endorphin hit. And a sometimes worrying temporary lack of sensation in you tongue from the tongue numbing Sichuan peppers. We sampled wood ear mushrooms with Sichuan peppers, chicken in spicy tongue numbing sauce, sliced whelks, little duck things in steamed bun, green beans with spicy minced pork and my favourite the boiled fish in ridiculously spicy broth. Miso high on chillies!! misohungry.blog
The subject of getting a Chinese is a funny thing in our household. I love Chinese food. I always have and so I loved my trip to China in 2011 when I was able to sample the real deal (or at least the most Western of their dishes – however much I love Chinese food I can’t convince myself to try the more offal-ly dishes). We sampled a dumpling feast in Xi’an, a mouth-numbing hotpot in Chengdu, Peking duck in Beijing (where else?) and amazing Kung Pao chicken. Ever since then I’ve searched for great Chinese food wherever I’ve been. I found a great place in Nottingham, Shanghai Shanghai, thanks to a high profile review (for Nottingham) from Giles Coren and I’ve been wanting to find somewhere similar in London. I know that Chinatown is full of Chinese restaurants but many tend to be Cantonese rather than the Sichuan food I craved.The problem though is my boyfriend. He doesn’t eat meat and has remained adamant that Chinese food is not a cuisine for non-meat eaters (he’s not a big tofu person either). I can see his point that other Asian cuisines, like Thai or Japanese, cater much better for the fish eaters but I have tried to reason with him that China does have a coastline and so there will be good fish dishes. In fact, one of the best dishes I had when I visited China was Squirrelfish. However, he has firmly resisted, claiming that it is my contrary nature that makes me claim I like Chinese food so much. It’s not, I just like Chinese food.We’ve walked down Hanbury Street loads (mostly to get to DF Mexico or Poppies) and every time we’ve walked past Sichuan Folk and I’ve pointed it out to my boyfriend but I’ve never convinced him to go in.Back in May I finished my Postgraduate Diploma exam and came back home to an empty flat as my boyfriend was away on holiday with his family. So, seizing full advantage of my chance, I got online and ordered myself a takeaway from Sichuan Folk which I planned on eating before heading straight to bed as I’d been awake for over 30 hours by that point. While I was waiting for my food to be delivered I decided to do some tidying up and take out a bag of rubbish and recycling to the big dumpsters belonging to our block of flats. So far, so good. Until I lobbed the rubbish bag in and the bottle opener keyring that is attached to my keys got caught on the bag (they were also in my hand) and sailed into the dumpster with the bag of rubbish. Brilliant. I had to climb in (and keep in mind these things come up to my chest) in order to reach my keys. For one terrifying moment once I’d retrieved my keys I feared I might actually be stuck in there but I did manage to clamber out. So, by this point I was super tired and smelled of rubbish, it was one of those great days when I realised that I was a year off being 30 and had been defeated by a very small every day task. Then my food arrived and everything was made better. I vowed to persuade my boyfriend to actually visit Sichuan Folk so I could take advantage of their full menu and to get the food fresh from the kitchen.The other week I guilted him into going on a Friday night straight from work.It’s a tiny looking place from the front but really is Tardis-like inside. It isn’t anything fancy to look at but you should never judge a book by its cover, or a restaurant by its decor.Our waiter asked if we’d ever been there before and when we said we hadn’t he talked us through some of the most popular dishes on the menu, taking into account our dietary preferences and spicy food tolerance. It turns out that most of the dishes we were considering were ones that he recommended.Not pictured on the menu (many dishes are), so they’re easy to miss, the sweets and sour ribs are little nuggets of chewy but not tough meat covered in a wonderfully sticky marinade. To steal a phrase from the Colonel, they are finger licking good and the perfect nibbly starter.Vegetable dumplings might not look like much from the picture below but as they were tossed through some sauce practically right under my nose, they gave off the most amazing smell. Slippery little suckers but once you’ve got a hold on one, so good.As a side dish to our mains, and to share, we ordered dry-fried green beans (without pork mince). They were the first of the main dishes to arrive and so we sat picking at them and both agreed that they were the nicest beans we’d had. It’s rare that I could enjoy a vegetable dish on its own as I tend to see meat as the star of a meal, but we both agreed that we could have almost had these as a main and been happy. I’m sure that means there’s no goodness left in the beans, but I don’t care, they tasted damn good.My main of gong bao chicken was delicious, although oddly it was definitely less spicy than the version I’d had delivered to me following my exam. Maybe they catered to my Western tastebuds, maybe they had a different chef on, I’m not sure. Good regardless though.My boyfriend, after attempting a rather intimidating fish in chilli oil dish at Shanghai Shanghai in Nottingham and struggling with the heat, toned it down here and went with the fish in Sichuan style. What kind of fish? I have no idea but the soft little battered bits of fish melted in your mouth. Perfect.Full and happy, we paid the bill and my Chinese food sceptical boyfriend was won over. If somewhere can make a plate of regular green beans something special, then they apparently have his heart. He’s already been talking of a return visit to Sichuan Folk. Why didn’t I convince him this was a good idea much sooner? notquiteenough.co.uk
Loved it! Fitting that I’m writing this review after eating awesome Sichuan food in HK too :). Favourites – beans and pork mince, the special dumplings and that fishin chillis – those chillis should numb your lips, don’t worry, they’ll come back to life Think these are fairlystandard, popular Sichuan dishes, so will definitely try and branch out a bit next time. Drank a pint of cold white wine, went down a treat. Great, friendly service.
The food was authentic and spicy, and I really enjoyed the atmosphere as it was full of young people. A bit expensive but its really worth it