Mr Zhang Szechuan Restaurant

They moved to Crystal Mall and they no longer omit the MSG.

I grew up in a Szechuan restaurant, so I guess you could say I know a bit about spicy food… =P
Came here for the first time with my family last night and the short version is — restaurant was clean, service was great, NO MSG, and everyone left very satisfied and very, very full. Oh and they now accept Interact, Visa & Mastercard.
Now for the details if you’re into that sorta thing.
What We Ate
1) Potato Thread — such a simple dish, but done perfectly.
2) Braised Spare Ribs — basically a big plate of melt in your mouth meat! One of my favorites of the night.
3) Ma Po Tofu — this dish is bastardized at every other faux-​chinese restaurant. This is the real deal.
4) Sliced Lamb with Cumin Spicy Sauce — the beef was amazingly tender and the cumin sauce wasn’t overpowering but so spicy!
5) Pork Intestines with Chilli Pepper — this dish had potential, it’s just too bad that the chef was a bit heavy handed with the salt on this one.
6) Tilapia with Brown Sauce — was just «ok.»
7) Dry Fried Green Beans — not bad, but my dad makes them better :)
8) Shanghai Chow Mein — completely acceptable.
9) Rice Noodle in a Chicken Soup base with sliced pork & veggies — Even though it came toward the end of our meal when we were all slowing down, the noodles were so perfectly chewy and the broth so light and refreshing that some of us ended up fighting for second helpings.
10) Sliced Pork & Sour Cabbage Soup — another dish I couldn’t find on their English menu, but I personally loved this one as it reminded me of my childhood when my Gramps would serve this with fresh homemade Shandong «man tou.» Can be a bit of an acquired taste for those not used to a soup that’s primary flavour is «sour.»
Now for the big kicker, all that food and can you guess what our total bill came to?! After HST and a 20% tip it still came to less than $ 130.00!!! Jaw-​dropping AMAZING.
Mr. Zhang also came out a few times to check on the progress of our meal. He was soft-​spoken and very sweet, but you could tell that he was very passionate about the quality of his food.
I couldn’t be happier with this discovery, and will definitely be back!

fairly clean decore. somewhat quaint wall art (ie they let customers draw on it apparently).
here’s what i had:
beef noodle soup: noodles were good, soup base was good too. not as intense as other places, maybe msg free or not as much? the beef was somewhat disappointing you could tell that it was cooked ahead of time and just reheated due to it’s lack of tenderness. a little surprising given the amount of time it took to come out.
pork/​veg pot sticker: pretty good, up to most people’s standards
shanghai noodle stir fry (idk what the english name): noodles were good, sauce was good, this dish usually uses cabbage, this one used something else. still overall good.
fyi, Mr Zhang is the chef, i asked :)
only thing that stuck out was that this place was a little pricer than what i think it should have been.

To be Honest, Everytime im there, I dont wish to go anywhere else.
Hence the 1 extra *
And being Vegetarian, The hef now prepares vegetarian Chicken for us :) I have been there like almost every week now.
Love the Food

*Cash Only*
We visited this new restaurant recently. We had been to the restaurant before new ownership and hadn’t realized that it had changed hands.
I cannot recall what the décor was like previously but it is bright and sunshiny yellow and very clean. I put my camera down for a moment to take a call on my cell and when I looked down at the viewfinder, it was framing a very nice shot. I simply reached down and pressed the button. Great photo opportunities are not why people come to restaurants though. It’s all about the food.
Once again, I had allowed myself to get monstrously hungry. We made some quick choices off the menu and hoped that they would be quick. While we were waiting the hostess brought us a small dish of freshly roasted and seasoned peanuts. Then she brought another, and another. They were yum and ensured that I survived to eat another meal.
Chicken corn soup. Hot and not much flavour.
Beef & Black Bean. Tastey. I love black beans. Meat was very soft and fresh.
Shanghai Broad Noodles. Broad noodles, mildly seasoned. We had wanted to order Singapore spicy noodle but it is not a regional Szechuan dish. The server offered to have them made spicy but I didn’t detect any heat.
Lemon Chicken. Thin breaded chicken cutlets with sauce that tasted more like plum than lemon. Interesting.
We left with a decent amount of leftovers. When reheating them the next day it became apparent that they were cooked using a fair amount of oil. We will return however to sample a few more items from their menu, including some vegetarian choices.