Description
Located in a part of Elmhurst just south of the LIRR populated mainly with Taiwanese, Thai, and Vietnamese restaurants, Sweet Yummy House mayb the only Sichuan restaurant between Manhattan and Flushing. The menu is fairly unusual in the city because it caters to Taiwanese tastes. That means plenty of heat via chile oil and fresh hot peppers, but fewer Sichuan peppercorns. Nevertheless, dishes such as lamb with chiles and ma po tofu (here called “bean curd with spicy minced pork”) are memorably good, and surprisingly cheap. The best thing we tasted was cold jelly Chengdu style – referencing Sichuan’s capital and consisting of wobbly and translucent mung bean noodles, in this case with a fair dose of Sichuan peppercorns. Sweet Yummy House also offers a handful of Taiwanese dishes, including three-cup chicken (number one on the discount lunch menu) and Taiwanese cabbage, both of which provide a cooling antidote to all those chile peppers. --Robert Sietsema
