Shaanxi Garden is a Chinese Restaurant located in Mesa Arizona. They specialize in serving Chinese Dishes from the desert Shaanxi region of China. Most dishes are large and are meant to be shared. Some of the dishes do run spicy and some dishes might contain mouth numbing Sichuan peppercorns but the dishes are not fiery hot like Szechuan dishes. They serve hand made noodles here so you might want to give them a try.
It’s casual.
The word biang is the sound of making noodles……(hint hint…get the handmade noodles)
During the day they tell us to seat ourselves.
There is a small bar in the restaurant indicating that some alcohol is available.
The current menu is broken down into cold dishes like coming called mixing cucumber, spicy beef tripe, and pork in garlic sauce. You can find appetizers such as egg rolls, potstickers, and dumplings. Soups like seaweed and egg, congee with pork and century eggs. They offer various chicken, beef, pork, lamb, seafood, and vegetable dishes. Some of the dishes offer are American Chinese style like orange chicken and beef and broccoli. However you can also find the seldom found at other restaurants like toothpick lamb, twice cooked pork with Shaanxi buns, and Talchi squirrel shaped fish.
We always order way more food than we need and always bring home the leftovers.
Our last food critic raved about the crispy chicken Shaanxi Style so we tried it.
It’s fried chicken breast with a crispy coating with the seasoning on the side. The seasoning has all kinds of flavors and sesame seeds and heat in it. It is tasty. Most people would like the taste of it. Today this dish ran a bit dry.
I’m not entirely sure what they served us as our main this time. I asked for the water boiled fish filet because I’ve had this dish at several other places and knew what to expect. I think the waiter repeated back water boiled fish with pickled cabbage and chili? On my receipt it reads, pickled fish. Whatever it was……. it was REALLY GREAT!
It doesn’t look like water boiled fish because it doesn’t have all the oil, chilies, and mouth numbing peppercorns on the top. This is actually better than water boiled fish. It has more flavors and more textures than other water boiled fish dishes that I have tried.
This dish also has rice noodles in it.
It has heat in it but not a crazy amount of heat. The fish is mild and melt in your mouth soft. The broth is well made. The pickled peppers in this dish make it interesting. There is a lot of fish in this dish. I think that this dish can feed 3-4 people.
Last time we had a plate called the house special braised chicken with noodle.
This plate is very special. It is more well known in Shaanxi Cuisine as Big Plate Chicken.
It’s like Chinese Thanksgiving in a bowl. It’s full of chunks of marinated chicken, peppers, onions, potatoes, garlic, chestnuts, chili peppers, and maybe cumin, star anise, soy sauce, and chewy long noodles. Actually I thought this dish was even better the next day when I had it again.
We also tried a few vegetable dishes that were very good!
Below is a- choy in garlic sauce. (I don’t recall seeing it on the current menu?)
On my last visit we tried the sautéed potato, pepper, and eggplant dish.
It was delicious anyone would like it.
That was a little taste of Shaanxi Garden in Mesa.
Shaanxi Garden is Worth a Fork!
www.ShaanxiBiangBiang.com
