Texas Tabelog

Sichuanese Cuisine
2001 Coit Rd, Plano, TX 75075
Google Rating: 4.3 Stars (560 Reviews)

Habibi-san’s rating:

I learned a lot about (~mostly disreputable~) street food stalls in 2025 through short form media. Who knew that you could make an omelet in Mumbai with skittles and Fanta?

I can tell you that videos from Vietnam, Cambodia, Nepal, and Myanmar have the best educational tutorials on how to prepare rat on a stick (rest assured they are rice field rats and not urban sewer rats). Italy serves hot roasted chestnuts in paper cones on the piazzas during the Roman winters. Trustworthy Malaysian stalls in Jalan Alor, a famous night street market pictured below, serve Nasi Lemak; the national dish containing fragrant rice cooked in coconut milk and served with chili paste, anchovies, peanuts, cucumbers, and eggs (I tend not to bookmark the Malaysian food videos because my wife would rather walk a mile through glass than use all her annual PTO on a trip to Malaysia).

Overall, what makes street food hygienic or unhygienic besides my implicit racial bias? The best way to handle foreign street food is to make a gamble and deal with the consequences. Besides New York hot dog carts and well-regulated trendy food trucks, there is not a street food scene in the United States like you would expect at a Wuhan wet market. And in Dallas, there is no equivalent experience. The closest experience you can find is at Southeast Asian restaurants with burned out neon and ripped upholstery. The stakes are much lower, but you still need to roll the dice.

To be very clear, there have never been any (documented) outbreaks of food-borne illnesses at Sichuanese Cuisine. They have been around for ages, and I am sure the Dallas health inspector has heard about them. You would not know for sure after entering the establishment. The wooden front door is rotting off its hinges, the windows hold years of layered customer fingerprints, and their bathroom is third world. It is obvious where Sichuanese Cuisine ends and the neighboring Dunkin’ Donuts begins:

It used to be in a much cleaner storefront next to the 99 Ranch Market on 75 and Spring Creek, but they must be getting communist subsidized rates at this new spot. I am probably being overly dramatic, but this place is like Paddy’s Pub without the liquor license. It is a squatter’s crack den ten years too early. The teleshopping channel that plays on their budget TV does nothing to dispel the dingy atmosphere or jaundiced lighting. Stacks of wholesale rice sacks line the back wall alongside an unused built-in salad bar that must have come with the lease.

To add to their feng shui, they employ a real-life dominatrix to be their waitress. While sexual supremacy may not be a part of her job description, verbal intimidation certainly is. I have been racially profiled and refused service in Japan, and I felt better than when interacting with my waitress at Sichuanese Cuisine. All in all, she means well but she is a stone-cold BITCH. I feel like Michelin critics would eat here if they ever needed some real-world perspective or a complete factory reset. I think it would benefit all parties involved if the good people at Sichuanese Cuisine ditched the storefront entirely and operated exclusively as a ghost kitchen.

The menu equally makes me chuckle. Every navy-blue item indicates a highly recommended item, but the blue font color is so close to the regular black text that it is almost indistinguishable. Thankfully, they have a small bullseye next to the dish number to help differentiate. At the end of the day, is it really any useful if half of the menu is a highly recommended item?

I ordered the F5, Sichuanese Boiled Fish, and was met with a stifling pot of white fish, chili oil, and grease. It was a flavor blast of spice and tenderized fish. The spice was manageable and heavily aromatic with hints of garlic and ginger. After a few bites, my mouth was tingling and numb from the peppercorns and sweet licorice taste of the star anise. I kept stirring to keep the chili oil grease from rising to the top. The bowl was inundated with star anise and halfway through my meal, I felt like I had drunk the dregs of a pint of mulled wine. But, man was it worth it.

It was more flavorful than the Chongqing crispy spicy chicken I had on my previous visit and what I recommend for first time customers.

For reference, this meal took place one hour before a “very important budget meeting” and I needed the endorphins. I also desperately needed my morning probiotic to singlehandedly hold the front lines until my commute home. It is irresponsible how often I rely on 1 billion CFU to hold me through the workday. If you actually plan on eating at the restaurants in my blog during the workday, I recommend these bad boys:

They are absolute game changers, the Rolls Royce of colon health. I drank the entirety of the blood red Sichuan soup from hell and held it together long enough that afternoon to arbitrarily cut costs for fiscal year 2026. No one in the budget meeting knew that I had enough oil in my blood to clot a diabetic’s leg.

In a generally risk free and casino barren city, find a cheap thrill by gambling with your intestinal health. Worst case scenario, you can call in a Z-Pak and stay in bed watching Brits eat jellied eels. It could always be worse, right?

Ma al salama (さようなら ),
Habibi-san