2172 South Archer Avenue (map)
(312) 326-5040
www.laoszechuan.com
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Lao Sze Chuan’s courteously efficient waitstaff is always ready to refill your water glass, which is especially important given the restaurant’s spicy Szechuan dishes. Your meal starts off nicely with a small complimentary plate of sliced cabbage in chile oil—simple yet well prepared, and a good omen of what’s to come.

Excellent starters are the Spicy Rabbit (on the bone) or the Sliced Beef and Maw Szechuan-style, served in spicy chile oil, as well as the Chengdu Dumplings. For the less adventuresome, there are also the ubiquitous American/Cantonese egg rolls and potstickers.

In the strictly Szechuan camp, Chicken with Chilies looks lethal, with what appears to be a hundred small dried red chiles, but it is surprisingly mild—as long as one avoids eating the dried chiles themselves. There’s a similar dish made with rabbit, which is also quite good.

Lao Sze Chuan has a number of interesting, wildly diverse, and delicious menu items, from Tea-Smoked Duck to wonderfully rich Braised Pork Elbow. The kitchen does seafood—both shellfish and fin fish—well, and whole fish are a house specialty. Salt and Pepper Three Delights (scallop, squid, shrimp) is highly recommended.

Vegetable entries include Potherb with Dried Chiles, Long Beans Dry-Fried with Dried Shrimp, and Green Beans Fried with Spices, which is a deceptively hot and spicy dish. Chili Potato is an odd-sounding dish for a Chinese restaurant, since one does not normally associate potatoes and Chinese food, but the still-firm potato slivers, bathed in oil that the dried chiles had been fried in, is a delicious, though starchy, treat.

Lao Sze Chuan offers a small number of Chinese desserts. Rice Pudding for Two is a warm pancake of sticky rice with lotus seeds, watermelon seeds, peanuts, and sweet red-bean paste. The Chengdu Dumplings in Wine Sauce is a sweet rice-wine soup with small chewy rice-flour dumplings filled with sugar and ground black sesame seeds.

Other Location
500 East Ogden Avenue, Westmont; (630) 455-4488