16 Tongue-Numbing Sichuan Restaurants to Try in Los Angeles
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Wonho Frank Lee
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For more than a decade, Sichuan food has taken Los Angeles by storm to become one of the most popular regional Chinese cuisines in the city. Prior to Sichuan’s rise, LA’s Chinese food scene was dominated by Cantonese and Taiwanese establishments. The uptick in mainland Chinese immigration these past two decades, along with substantial financial investments from abroad, has led to an explosion of Sichuan restaurants in the Southland. The cuisine’s bold flavors, coupled with its liberal use of garlic, chile peppers, and tingling “mala” numbing spice, has made it a craveable experience that people cannot get enough of. Here now are 16 sensational Sichuan restaurants to try in LA.
227 W Valley Blvd #108A, San Gabriel, CA 91776
Matthew Kang
For those who can handle numbing spice, Killer Noodle has customizable Chinese-inspired Japanese ramen from the folks that brought you Tsujita ANNEX in Sawtelle.
Killer Noodle serves three types of noodles: Original style, Downtown style, and Tokyo style. You can choose to get your noodles with or without soup in addition to the level of spiciness and numbness on a scale of 0-6. The spiciest noodles are a tie between the Tokyo bowl, which is a Japanese spin on Chinese-style dan dan noodles and the Downtown style, which is more of a Sichuan-esque mala noodle. The Downtown uses scoops of ghost pepper whereas the original uses Thai chiles. The chile oil takes over 24 hours to make from start to finish.