Original Cuisine is a casual Chinese Restaurant located in Mesa Arizona. They offer mostly Sichuan Chinese foods that run mild, spicy, molten spicy, and also American Chinese Foods. This is not a fancy place. It is very casual here. On our last visit they served our beverages in paper cups.
You walk in and see part of the dining area is used for storage. But to be fare this is a small building that appears to have been a small fast food restaurant. I can tell that by the drive threw (no longer in use) and the floor tiles that look like from Burger King.
In 2017 this restaurant received a very rare 4.5 star rating from the food critic from our local newspaper. I noticed that two of the three plates I tried from that time are no longer on the menu (fried rice balls stuffed with black sesame paste and the sautéed garlic lettuce).
The current menu does differ some but you will find things here that are not found on average Chinese menus like the rabbit meat with bullfrog with pickled peppers and ginger.
Today I wanted to try different menu items so this restaurant would be new and fresh to me.
We shared three dishes.
The chongqing spicy crispy chicken are small but very tender chunks of chicken that are fried crispy but isn’t oily at all. It’s not as fiery hot as it looks if you don’t eat the crispy peppers. This is a tasty dish that I think most people would be able to eat the one I had. But a word of warning….hot peppers run much hotter sometimes…could vary.
This is the most tender beef that I have had in a long time. Zero heat here…..If you blind folded me and made me taste this I’d be veery confused………The sauce and the texture are not shawarma but it taste something like shawarma……The dominate flavor is allspice.
We shared a vegetable dish of stir fried eggplant with green beans.
Not spicy but tasty and not too sweet or oily soaked. The green beans are tender crisp and the eggplant isn’t soggy.
Previously we have tried the house special BBQ fish (catfish).
Now THIS WAS FIREY MOLTEN HOT AS HOT GETS! But it was really delicious. Hope they still make it the same way!
That was a taste of Original Cuisine in Mesa AZ.
www.OriginalCuisineAZ.com
Everything is subject to change and usually does eventually change.
