DINING OUT: Szechuan Opera
Rochester Restaurant Dishes Up Authentic Chinese Flavor
By Jacob Pucci
Judging by its subdued exterior on the opposite end of a generic shopping plaza from a 7-Eleven convenience store on Rochester’s Park Avenue neighborhood, Szechuan Opera doesn’t look like much.
But step inside and you’ll not only find a beautiful dining room designed like a Chinese garden, but a menu full of real-deal Sichuan dishes you won’t find at your usual Chinese takeout spot.
Fear not, General Tso’s lovers — Szechuan Opera has all the Americanized classics too, including a $12 weekday lunch special that includes white or fried rice and soup or spring roll. Takeout and delivery are available — bonus points for the restaurant’s station for delivery drivers equipped with hot coffee and snacks — though that would mean missing out on the cozy ambiance that elevates the meal.
With well over 100 items on the menu, diners can only hope to scratch the surface of everything Szechuan Opera has to offer with each meal. While the platter of sweet and sour chicken I spotted heading to a neighboring table, stacked high and still steaming, looked great, I chose to focus on the Sichuan side of the menu.
Dan dan noodles ($10.99) is listed as a starter, though this large bowl could easily be a meal. The hot noodles sat in a chili oil-sesame paste sauce and were topped with steamed baby bok choy and crispy fried ground pork. While plentiful, the noodles were a bit plain, lacking peanuts and pickled vegetables, both common in dan dan noodles, and not enough sauce to properly coat them.
From the dim sum menu, the pan-fried pork buns ($8.99 for three) are a must. Steamed pork buns, with their soft, yeasty and slightly sweet dough wrapped around a ball of flavorful pork, are among my favorite foods of any cuisine. Yet these buns are even better, thanks to the crispy, golden brown edges that provide a wonderful textural contrast to the pillowy bun.
I’m a simple man easily entertained by food served in sizzling hot pans. If you’re dining at a Tex-Mex restaurant and you hear the hiss and smell the aroma of a hot pan of steak fajitas making their way through the dining room, they might be heading my way. At Szechuan Opera, we’re talking about dry pot, a stir-fry of proteins and vegetables with plenty of heat and mala, the mouthwatering and numbing sensation caused by Sichuan peppercorns.
You can get your dry pot with chicken, pork, beef, fish, lamb, shrimp, seafood combination, pork intestine, frog, duck, tofu, cabbage and cauliflower, the latter of which are joined by sliced pork belly. There is certainly never a shortage of options.
The special dry pot ($29.99) combines beef, shrimp, fish filet and Spam — yes, everyone’s favorite salty canned meat product makes an appearance — along with wood ear mushroom, broccoli, Chinese cauliflower, bell pepper, onion, lotus root, chili peppers, dried tofu skin and bean curd in a sauce that prepared to our requested medium spice level, provided the right amount of spice and tingly sensation without
being overbearing.
As the name implies, dry pot has similar flavors to Sichuan hot pot, just without the broth, creating a deep flavor that’s even more concentrated after a few minutes inside the metal wok, kept hot from a small chafing burner underneath.
Stir-fried lamb or beef with cumin ($24.99) has origins in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang, many miles away from Sichuan and even further away from cities like Shanghai and Beijing. Luckily for us, the dish traveled and is now commonplace on many Sichuan restaurant menus.
The aroma of whole cumin seed and Sichuan peppercorns, bloomed in hot oil, is the first thing you’ll notice, followed quickly by the tender pieces of lamb that are crispy on the outside, with delectable, caramelized bits. The lamb was joined with onions, bell peppers, moderately spicy long hot peppers, fresh cilantro and dried chili peppers that provided a deep, toasted, slightly smoky flavor. Like the dry pot, this was customized to medium spice.
It seems like a simple dish at face value, but the complexity of the flavor — the savory lamb, the sweetness of the flame-kissed onion and bell pepper, the spice of the chili and tingle of the Sichuan peppercorns — makes for an exceptional dish.
Make sure to pack your leftovers (and there will be leftovers — the portion sizes are quite large) and save room for dessert. The menu doesn’t really do justice to the pumpkin pies and sesame balls ($7.99 for two pieces of each). The little fried pumpkin cakes, or nan gua bing, couldn’t be more different than the slice of pumpkin pie you’ll top with whipped cream at Thanksgiving. Instead, they’re made with a glutinous rice dough and filled with red bean paste. They’re crispy on the inside and soft and chewy on the inside, with a mild sweetness from the pumpkin.
The sesame balls have a similar mochi-style chewy interior, except with a coating of sesame seeds on the outside. Unlike the sesame seeds on your Big Mac bun, these are cooked in oil until golden brown, giving them the toasty, nutty flavor one finds in sesame oil but so rarely finds when the seeds are reduced to being an underappreciated garnish.
Park Avenue is home to some of Rochester’s best restaurants and Szechuan Opera more than fits the bill.
My tip: Bring a crowd, share one of the large round tables, tucked away under a pagoda or private nook, order way too much food, and enjoy.
Szechuan Opera
630 Park Ave., Rochester, NY, 14607 | 585-340-6133
Open daily from 11 a.m. to 9:45 p.m.
Parking in adjacent lot is free for up to two hours with validation.