My current favorite Portland restaurant isn’t actually in Portland. It’s in a Happy Valley strip mall tucked away near a 24-hour WinCo and a T.J. Maxx, off SE 82nd Avenue. Inside, fluorescent lights hang from the ceiling, and cartoons of chubby fishermen and angry ladies with curlers in their hair paper the walls.

Sichuan City has been open since 2019, but it’s received little media fanfare (not counting its inclusion in our top 50 restaurants list and roundup of the best Chinese restaurants). On weekend nights, you’ll have no difficulty securing a table. Honestly, why aren’t Portlanders lining up out the door?

Other restaurants in town serve Sichuan dishes, but not at this level. Consider that I’ve traveled all the way to the Los Angeles suburbs for Sichuan food of this caliber. Sichuan City isn’t just one of Portland’s best Chinese restaurants, it’s one of the best restaurants in the area, a top-tier spot in its own right.

This is where I come to celebrate my birthday or bring family visiting from out of town. You can fill the table with sub-$20 dishes and easily share the generous portions. And thanks to the food alone—it certainly isn’t the not-so-hip ambience—eating here is just fun.

Take the restaurant’s signature dish: bucket fish. Nowhere else in Portland can you dive face-first into a massive steaming basin of tingly green peppercorn broth, bobbing with flaky white fish, chewy tofu skin, crunchy cabbage, and the occasional sliver of fiery green pepper. The wild chile version, one of three flavors the bucket fish comes in, is complex, subtle, floral, and citrusy. You’ll have to move everything around on the lazy Susan in order to make room—and it’s a conversation starter. “My mouth is tingling,” a friend shouted the first time she tried the wild chile bucket fish. “I think I just ate a chile,” another grinned, reaching for water. Another calmly slurped their broth. “I’ve never tasted anything like this.” Many Sichuan restaurants offer some variation on boiled fish, usually in a red or green peppercorn broth that’s swimming with dried chiles, but few can match the impressive heft of Sichuan City’s bucket fish.

But, mostly, the difference is in the flavor. While some Sichuan restaurants lean heavily on chiles, oil, and numbing peppercorns, the food at Sichuan City is balanced, a whirlwind choose-your-own-adventure of spicy and tingly, restrained and delicate, tangy and sweet. There are dishes for spice-lovers and the heat-averse alike. Invite your friends and loved ones, since you’ll need at least four people to experience the restaurant’s range, though I’ve occasionally witnessed dedicated couples taking down an entire bucket fish. Split your attention between broth-based dishes, deep-fried bites, and stir-fried plates. Skip over the fried rice, noodle dishes, dumplings, and smattering of Chinese American dishes; they aren’t the draw.

Between sips of bucket fish, scoop up some eggplant mashed with green pepper and century egg, a dish my friends affectionately refer to as Chinese baba ghanoush. It’s served chilled, but it’s punctuated with fresh green chile, creating a surprising cold-but-spicy sensation. Chunks of al dente eggplant are nestled into a smooth, garlicky purée for an unusual texture. Fight over irregular shards of translucent green-black century egg that add a little sweetness and funk.

Unlike the bucket fish, the beef in golden broth is pure umami, and it gets a touch of body and sweetness from an unexpected ingredient: pumpkin. The beef comes thinly sliced, almost like a cheesesteak, and melds into bright, fresh bean sprouts and slick, chewy glass noodles.

One of the best dishes is the simplest: the Chongqing hot chicken. Sichuan City serves the lightest, crispiest version in town, complete with a touch of sweet-tingly red Sichuan peppercorns. Pieces of chicken are nearly outnumbered by the quantity of sliced, toasted dried red chiles on top, not meant so much for eating as they are for releasing their heat during the cooking process and creating an impressive, if not slightly menacing, presentation. “This is the very famous chicken dish,” our server proclaimed with pride as he dropped it off at the table.

Round out dinner with any number of dishes: Salted egg yolk shrimp come battered in cured, salted duck egg yolk for a custardy richness, and then get fried until audibly crispy. Dry-fried green beans land several notches above the rest, thanks to Sichuan peppercorn and bits of salty, pungent Chinese olive. The dry-fried pork intestines, thinly sliced and tossed with chile, are simultaneously crisp and chewy. Cumin lamb is tender, fragrant, and full of toasty, warm spices. The jade tofu melds together jiggly fried slices of egg tofu with Chinese cauliflower, broccoli, and wood ear mushrooms. The mapo tofu is undeniable comfort food—its silky tofu enrobed in umami-packed sauce with a creeping, lingering heat. Wrap up with sticky rice cakes served with brown sugar syrup for dipping. They’re chewy like mochi, but stretchy like mozzarella sticks; see how long of a pull you can get as you tear it in half.

One of the servers recently told me that Sichuan Taste in downtown Portland is owned by the same folks as Sichuan City. “You could have saved me so much driving,” I thought to myself. But the trip to Happy Valley for Sichuan City is still well worth it. The downtown restaurant is missing the massive bucket fish, but dives deeper into unusual protein choices like bullfrog and crawfish. Meanwhile, Sichuan City leans more heavily on Sichuan dishes, offering not just the exclusive bucket fish, but lamb dishes and jade tofu that you won’t find at Taste. And, to be honest, I’ve come to love the bare, unnaturally bright strip mall ambience. As for the drive, well, you’ll have plenty of time to build anticipation—as well as plot out your massive order.