Review: Chili House turns up the heat

Dining Out By Janny Hu

April 4, 2013

With a name like Chili House, you’d expect plenty of heat. And yet, to laud the Clement Street newcomer for its spicy cuisine is almost selling the Sichuan restaurant short.

Yes, Chili House packs plenty of fire, more than I could handle on a few occasions. But Sichuan food is also about balance; spicy chiles with numbing peppercorns; pungent preserved vegetables; bean pastes that lean both salty and sweet.

Chef Li Jun Han has a range of flavors at his disposal, and just as at his popular Z&Y Restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown, the best meals at Chili House go beyond the flaming chili oils and explosive chile peppers…Read More

Chili House by Patricia Unterman

January 3, 2013

Paul Kwan, my Clement Street insider, turned me on to Chili House, a new Sichuan/northern Chinese restaurant in the inner Richmond, and a relative of Z & Y, a Sichuan place in San Francisco’s Chinatown. The chef at Chili House worked at Z & Y, and apparently the ownership is the same. However, Chili House does not aspire to the dramatic presentations and banquet service of the mother ship, nor are its dishes as layered and complex. It does turn out unusual and compelling items not previously available on Clement Street. Judicious ordering from the long Chili House menu will net an excellent neighborhood meal, casual and affordable, in a comfortable dining room…Read More