Spicy Empire

Delicious! This is one of my favorite Chinese restaurants, so try it out, but don’t make a line when I go!

Food was good had great flavor scenery was ok. The food we ordered was served in a fast time. The food was really hot the way I like it hot and spicy and I enjoyed my meal with a cold tsingtao. The only negative I have is the price but other than that I liked it

Wrong dish was served… please hire more people! One person is not enough. Some people waited there for so long without being served and walked away

We love spicy fish fillet with flaming chili oil. We order it every time. Although it looks very spicy, it is not. It can be mush spicier if I was eating alone.
We also got something with eggs, which I liked. Service is slow… Even when they are not busy and sometimes communication is difficult, but we love their food.
So far, nothing we had has been really spicy.

We decided to try this place on a whim and I am glad it was worth it.
For appetizers we had ordered the Green Onion pancake & Steamed Pork Dumpling; the pancake was great, pork dumplings okay.
For main course the Tender fish in House Spicy sauce with steamed rice & Tan Tan noodle all pretty good. We can control the spice levels in the fish by adjusting the sauce which is great.
Main course portion size is huge it serves 3 people comfortably. fish in spicy sauce and tan tan noodles both have sesame seeds which adds a very nice flavor to the dishes.
The problem with this is we cannot try more dishes.
Service was great.
Will definitely visit the place again.

We used to love this place so much that we would drive all the way from San Jose to this place. However, I am totally disappointed today by the quality of their dishes and the service. First of all, it took more than 45 minutes for them to make the dishes when the restaurant was less than half capacity. More importantly, the flavor was not authentic Sichuan/​Chongqing spiciness. Instead, it tasted like sweet Shanghai dishes. Lastly, please be aware that they charge 25 cents for each takeout box if you want to bring the leftovers back. This is the first place I have ever been to that charges for takeout boxes.

Finally have a chance to try their hot pot.
Pretty authentic Sichuan spicy hot pot as expected. Very good but don’t like to have to order each dish and portion is also generally not small. They should adapt to Korean AYCE style, so that we can try more varieties, the price won’t come up much different but a few dollars more (yes that will get them a lot more customers and better ratings).

Stay away from hotpot.
I suffered a really bad MSG attack after trying the hotpot.

Really good spicy fish noodles!
I get this everytime I’m here.
The place is a little far away from downtown san mateo (driving distance instead of walking distance). The place is opened pretty late, and recently renovated.
In terms of the food, this place is definitely the real deal. Real sichuan spice.
Definitely worth coming back again and again

A take-​out dinner at Spicy Empire ended up taking an entire hour, which is more than excessive, and definitely inspired feelings of ill-​will towards the restaurant.
That being said, the food was fantastic. And it wasn’t even one of those rose-​colored glasses things, every dish that we had was solid. My favorites were definitely:
+XIAO LONG BAO
+CHICKEN w/​EXPLOSIVE CHILI PEPPER
+GREEN BEANS w/​SALTED EGG
I would 100% say if you want take-​out, call it in and head over later, to avoid the mess that our wait-​time was, but still, this place churns out some solid, delicious stuff!

I don’t know much about Szechuan cuisine so I can’t speak about the authenticity of this place. However, I do enjoy the food here. The last few times I went, the quality of the food was pretty consistent. My favorite dishes are the dan dan noodles, crispy chicken nuggets, crispy fish filet of sole, and the beef in hot chili oil. I don’t know if I’m just lucky but I have yet to experience the slow service that everyone is talking about. My food always comes out super fast! Overall, the food is good, the service is efficient. It gets 4 stars in my book! I’d recommend it.

I lived in Beijing, visited the Szechuan province, and have unfortunately become a bit of a Szechuan snob.
The good– the presentation of dishes was great.
The bad– The food was really, really greasy. Meat dishes were very meat deprived, and the Szechuan dishes lacked flavor. I left regretting not listening to the bad reviews on this place here on Unilocal before trying this place.
The food here tastes more Hong Kong’esque than it does Szechuan, which sounds extra snobby but it’s true.
For good Szechuan, I like Sichuan Fortune House in Pleasant Hill and Little Szechuan in SF.
Specs: Tan Tan noodles receives 3 stars. Fish filet of sole receives one star. Lamb chop receives one star. Ma Po receives 2 stars. Service receives 3 stars.

Headed to lunch today with coworkers and had a really excellent meal.
We haven’t been here all that frequently, mainly because we liked Spices better, but Spices closed last year so suddenly we needed a new favorite Szechuan place. Enter Spicy Empire.
The great:
Sauteed Beech Mushrooms — Crispy mushroom and onion strips. Outstanding.
Spicy Tofu with Fish Fillet — Delicious. Spicy and flavorful, with tofu cubes and pieces of fish. I could eat this every day.
Spicy Eggplant — A bit oily (as eggplant preparations often are) but sweet and spicy flavor went over extremely well.
Beef in Flaming Oil — Tender and flavorful beef made this a big winner.
Combination Spicy Pot — They use a subtle and dry numbing spice preparation that added a ton of flavor with just a touch of heat. The combination included a shocking number of different items (is it in the kitchen? throw a slice of it in here!) so I might choose a specific item next time, but this is definitely on the must-​have list.
The okay:
Xiao Long Bao — Good flavor, nice thickness of dumpling wrapper. Not enough soup, though, and the dumplings were flat.
Cumin Lamb — Bold flavor without much heat. Perfectly acceptable but doesn’t rise to a must-​order status.
Twice Cooked Pork — This was okay, but not great. The pork pieces were a little too big, and it was missing the pressed tofu pieces that I have found at other restaurants.
The meh:
Beef Pancake — Pancake with ground meat rolled up and then sliced into pieces. Pretty good, but didn’t stand out.
Dry Sauteed String Beans — Just okay. Lots of dried pepper pods don’t add much but do get in the way.
So we really enjoyed this meal and are going to have to get this place into the rotation more frequently.

2.5 stars
This place has definitely decreased in rating. We were telling my sister how good this place was and she disagreed, which I agree with.
We got the lamb fried rice (same as we got last time) except this time it was bland and had scarce pieces of lamb. When you put something in the name, you kind of expect it to have it on your plate. Luckily (or unluckily) we also got the cumin lamb, which was a super small portion and super dry. The cumin flavor was okay, but it was hard to eat when the lamb was so touch. I liked the spicy numbing beef tendon, but that was only an appetizer.
Overall, the dishes lacked quality and quantity.

I came here for the first time earlier today. I ordered take-​out.
However, they charged me more than what really should be charged. I don’t know why. They have 2 types of menus. One is black and very unclear.
The prices on the 2 different menus are different for some dishes.
They charged me 2 – 3 dollars more. Maybe they charge for take-​out boxed? I’m not sure, but that’s the only reason I can imagine.
The food are good actually, but no one wants to be overcharged.