Category: Chinese Restaurants

**** Fish With You has changed their name to Yonny Mini Hot Pot, though it seems that the Suancai Fish is still offered

After our terrible revisit to Spicy City, the Missus wanted something “dependable”. Because the weather was still on the “cooler” side, She wanted “The Fish” (translation – Fish With You), versus “Da Fish” ( HFS). I now have the translation down! It had been a few months since our last visit so we headed on over.

We arrived at around 1145 and the place was empty of customers dining in; but there was a steady flow of takeout orders.

It was nice to know that our usual here, the Signature Suancai and Fish is still priced at $26.95. And one bowl of rice per person is still free…..I mean a bowl of rice is now like two bucks at most Chinese restaurants these days.

It seemed to have less chilies, which makes it easier for us when we take the leftovers home, as we remove the chilies to limit the crescendo of heat. It’s still spicy, though the Sichuan Peppercorns came thru a lot more on this visit. The fish still tender, there was a decent amount of suancai hidden in the broth. As mentioned in my previous post. We make sure to consume all the fish and take the leftovers home. We add tofu and shirataki….it’s almost better than the fish!

This is a nice lunch for $26.95, with leftovers for another meal.

There’s one observation we made during our visit. We noticed a buffet set-up against the wall.

The “red flag alert” went thru my head. While leaving the Missus asked if Fish With You was going to start serving Hot Pot and the young man said yes. They are starting in the next few weeks. Now, you might be wondering what the issue is. We’ve noticed that when businesses are starting to fail, they’ll often start going “off concept” doing things like hot pot. Which is what Juewei did before they closed. I’m hoping that Fish With You will stick around…….

Fish With You
3904 Convoy St. #101
San Diego, CA 92111

After our pleasant revisit to Szechuan Chef, the Missus was wondering how some of the other Sichuan style restaurants in San Diego were. So, I took a look at my “Big List” and oh my….we hadn’t been back to Spicy City since 2015! Like I said, we’d pretty much given up on Sichuan food in San Diego. Anyway, we thought we’d give Spicy City a try and headed on over.

When we first moved to San Diego in 2001, if I recall, the sign read “Beijing” Spicy City. Basically claiming to serve Beijing style Sichuan cuisine. Still, it was the only game in town for anything resembling traditional Sichuan food…until Ba Ren came along in 2003. Ba Ren really changed the game for us, we didn’t need to head over to the SGV for Sichuan. Of course Ba Ren closed in 2012. I have such great memories of the place. Well, enough of that. Spicy City has been around since 1997 or so, but has gone thru several ownership changes. My first blog post on Spicy City was when they went thru an ownership change in 2008. I know for certain that they went thru at least one new set of owners as of 2014. But have lost track since then. And viola! It’s April of 2026 and we’re eating at Spicy City!

Interesting to note that while Convoy Pointe Plaza was very busy…folks jostling for parking spots. I actually had to park on Engineer Road, Spicy City had only six tables filled by the time we left. And also of note…..we were the only Asian’s dining here!

I actually overheard two of the other tables ordering as they arrived after us. Stuff like Walnut Shrimp, Beef Broccoli, and Beef Chow Mein were being ordered. What the heck?

Also, the Missus for some reason wanted the Twice Cooked Pork with Garlic Sprouts, which they were out of. But they did have the “Homestyle” version ($16.99). In my own somewhat cynical mind, I think the “homestyle” means whatever they have on hand? Anyway, this was terrible.

The Hui Guo Rou, which should be somewhat chewy, was super tough and lacked flavor. Usually, in the Sichuan versions of this dish there would be some spicy and savoriness…this was just plain bland…where was the doubian, black bean, garlic, ginger?

The best dish of the meal was the Pork Intestine in Dry Pot ($16.99) and this still lacked the “ma-la”, the numbing spice typical of Sichuan cuisine.

At least it wasn’t bland. But the intestine was really tough and rubbery. Very little spice encountered. The best item in this dish were the soybean sprouts on the bottom of the dry pot. At least it had flavor and a nice crunchy texture.

I really wanted the Ko Shui Ji (“Mouthwatering Chicken” – $15.99) so I ordered that. For some reason it was the last dish to arrive. When it did…..well, it really gave me pause….. What the heck?

The portion size was humongous. It was covered with a thick layer of sesame paste which overwhelmed the dish, really blocking out the spice, acidity.

For your reference; this is what it looked like back in 2015:

The amount of chicken was huge, large dry slices.

This was a pretty disappointing meal…an “oh-fer-three”. The service was fine, at least the really rude guy who used to work here isn’t around anymore it seems. You know, I wasn’t expecting Mountain House or even Barshu. Just some solid Sichuan would have been fine.

But as it is; per the Missus, we’re done exploring anymore Sichuan in San Diego for now.

Spicy City
4690 Convoy St. #107
San Diego, CA 92111
Current Hours:
Mon – Thurs 11am – 830pm
Fri – Sun 11am – 9pm

Recently, FOY “Xiāng Jiāo” messaged me, letting me know that she believed Szechuan Chef had been improving over recent months. I’d pretty much given up on Sichuan cuisine in SD, but heck, it had been almost seven years since my last visit….so, I convinced the Missus that the time was right for a revisit.

Strangely, the parking lot of Convoy Village Shopping Center was basically empty when we arrived for lunch. Thus, in stark contrast to other locations on Convoy, parking was a breeze.

After being seated, we ordered four items. After our meal, we took a look at what we had ordered and noticed something quite “interesting”. We ended up ordering a couple of the recommended dishes and a few more. In terms of price, this seemed much cheaper than our recent meals at Cantonese style restauraurants.

First up, the Pork Intestines with Pickled Vegetable ($19.99). One of my favorite dishes at Eastern Dynasty is a version of this dish. And personally, I prefer that version, which is strangely much more tangy-sour than this version. Also, the intestine here, while being quite strong in the savory-“bungy” category, the intestines were overly rubbery, lacking in that initial resistance, followed by a creamy texture.

The preserved vegetable was very mild in flavor. Not a terrible dish, but perhaps I should have ordered the dry fried version?

The Fish Fragrant (yuxiang) Eggplant (aka Eggplant with Garlic Sauce on the menu – $14.99) was much too sweet.

The eggplant was also quite mushy in texture. Not a favorite of ours.

Next up was a dish that “XJ” recommended that I’ve ordered several times, the Beef Tendon with Pickled Peppers ($21.99).

So, this was better than what we’ve had before, but it still didn’t bring on as much sour-tangy-spicy tones as we like. We enjoyed the good amount of garlic though. And the tendons were so very….well tender! They almost melted in your mouth. I could just imagine this in a bowl of pho! We kept wondering how the chef prepped these to make it so buttery smooth? It did lack the spicy though…so we may look at another tendon dish if we return.

There was one dish that brought the heat and turned out to be our favorite of the meal; the Pork Trotters Hot Pot ($19.99) which was placed over a heating element at the table. The first thing to hit you when this dish arrives is the pungent-earthy-“BO” of cumin. Great when emanating from a dish….not so great when exuding from the person sitting next to you on a flight….can you tell I’m still traumatized by that???

This was spicy stuff….good ma-la going on here. The skin on the trotters was very soft and tender. The potatoes seemed to have easily absorbed the essence of the chilies, especially the one’s on the bottom. The Missus, who grew up eating cauliflower in Northern China loved it in this dish. We did enjoy this; though the leftovers were super spicy the next day.

Overall, including one order of rice, the bill came out to be $78 before tip and taxes, making it cheaper than any of the Chinese dining experiences we’ve had recently. We did notice that every protein based dish we ordered was basically offal. Could that be why? Anyway, we may return in a bit. And I need to thank “XJ” who helped to get us out of our Chinese dining “rut”.

Szechuan Chef
4344 Convoy St
San Diego, CA 92111
Current Hours:
Mon – Thurs 11am – 3pm, 5pm – 9pm
Fri – Sun 11am – 330pm, 5pm – 9pm