They serve incredible and authentic Szechuan style food with reasonable prices and large portions. Despite the restaurant's name, I'd suggest the menu dishes over the hot pot. Can't go wrong with the mapo tofu or la zi ji
It is a great taste! It has been so long that I had this tasty Kung Pao Chicken! It comes with a lunch menu of rice and soup with really good price! This will be my place for the next couple of months to try out noodles, beefs and apperatizes.
WOW. This place deserves 6 stars. If you like szechuan/spicy Chinese food, you NEED to come here. Seriously. Came in half an hour before closing and every single dish was amazing. I'm from NYC, which has no deficit of authentic Szechuan restaurants in flushing and Manhattan, but I can honestly say that this place is one of the best and it's a shame that I don't live in Ithaca to eat here more often. It's the perfect combination of great food and great prices. The prices here cannot be beat. Most of our dishes were less than $20.
The food: again, every single dish we got was great. Beef stir fried with hot chili peppers, popcorn chicken with chili peppers (la zhi ji), lamb with cumin, and mao xue wan were all 10/10. The egg drop soup with beef was delicious too.
The owner is really humble and came to ask for feedback after the meal and said that he uses customer feedback to improve their food. But honestly, I would come back just for the food alone. Price is a bonus. Note that they changed owners about 10 months ago.
If you love Sichuan hot pot or dishes … excellent food in this basement restaurant at Ithaca. 👍👍👍Discovered this place during my daughter’s last semester in Cornell. We went there like 15 times within a 3 month period. Very memorable and will it miss it lots 😭
Nice restaurant, great food and good staff. This is the first time I have dined here, the staff and service is very good. The Hot Pot and jasmine tea were excellent. Cannot wait to try the other meals on the menu.
My favourite restaurant in Ithaca!!! Most dishes are very tasty and the price is reasonable too. Best if you come with a big group so that you can try various dishes! Some might find the food too oily though.
Been ordering De Tasty for online delivery and I am in love with their lamb dishes which is the Sliced lamb with Cumin Powder Dry Chili with such a wise portion including the white rice and I could eat it for three meals. Yesterday was my first time dining inside the restaurant and inviting two friends of mine to capture this moment of having one of the best meals I've ever had in Ithaca.
I've wanted to have the lamb again but I need to move on this time although my love for the lamb will be infinite still! Lol. I got the Beef with Chili Peller Soup in Dried Pot which was so good, loving the soup, it was even served with vermicelli (I guess?), and the beef was so tender. My friend #1 got my favorite lamb dish and she loved it! I was so glad to know it. My friend #2 got the lunch special of Boiled Fish Filet and Tofu with Roasted Chili Pepper Sauce (starting from 11-2pm if I'm not mistaken) where we could get soup also besides white rice for every entreé. The fish filet and tofu dish were also scrumptious, the flavor is so rich and the sauce is tempting as you can see it is orange brown bright colored.
The staff was friendly but some of them have a language barrier which was okay but sometimes it will be hard to understand each other. Recommended to those who want to experience delicious meals that are rich in flavor in Ithaca which was hard to find, at least for me as an Asian!
This was the best Sichuan restaurant my family and I have eaten at ever. There was simply spectacular taste in every dish we ordered, and this is definitely a memorable dining experience. (Also, the photo in the review is at the point where we had eaten halfway through the chicken after a couple minutes, so it doesn’t show the actual portion.)
Starting with the basics, the menu is very well-rounded, the decor is lovely and warm, and the atmosphere is great. My family and I ordered the egg drop soup with minced beef, shredded beef sautéed with little hot peppers, sliced lamb with cumin powder, maoxuewang, and smoked wok tossed chicken with roasted chili. We highly recommend all of these dishes, especially the lamb. The prices for these dishes are reasonable, even more considering that the portions are huge but still manageable.
This is definitely one to add to all of our favorites. You won’t regret taking time to eat in this wonderful restaurant. You can tell that the staff are all hard-working. They also don’t mind chatting with you if you ask them questions, which we did about the restaurant. The food is indeed authentic; just the pleasant smell of the restaurant walking in told us that.
Overall, I don’t know what else to say except that this restaurant is truly mind-blowing. When we all took our first bites into the food, we were surprisingly delighted. Such high levels of crisp, tenderness, spice, authenticity, flavor, seasoning, and feel cannot be replicated elsewhere. I hope that I can revisit this place, even though I do live in NYC. I really won’t forget this experience, and thank you restaurant staff!
This place is so great, I had my birthday here with my family to share a big delicious hot pot and everyone had such a great time.
The place takes a bit of searching to find - look for another restaurant on the street level, and the look for the stairs leading down to the basement level. You'll be glad to have found it though, for the food is great! Atmosphere is certainly not the draw here but you are coming for the food after all, and it is clean and organized. Just don't expect to see a vista of the lake or college town; no windows as it is in the basement. Again - the food, it is what you came for and makes it all worth it!
My friend and I ordered two lunch specials today, which comes with fried rice, two dishes, and hot & sour soup. We ordered both with the mapo tofu and the dry string beans of the four options given. That’s what the special offers online, but it seems like the options are different if you order in person. Anyways, the portion of food was perfect and everything was delicious. The string beans are my favorite menu item and I order them every single time. My only gripe was with how oily the food was, but other than that, it was so delicious. And it was about $12.90 per person, which isn’t too bad (although Apollo’s special is cheaper, iirc).
The only authentic Sichuan place in town, and probably within a 50 mile radius. I ordered Dan Dan Noodles, Mapo Tofu, Pork Belly with preserved vegetables, Twice-cooked pork, and Beef with Scallions and Onions. Not quite spicy enough and slightly pricey but I'm glad I've found a decent Sichuan place in Ithaca.
The most authentic Chinese food I've had upstate yet. Great vegetarian options with tons of flavor.
Authentic Szechuan food that blows your mind and tastebuds, friendly staff, and speedy service. I have NO complaints about De Tasty. We regularly bring our small children here, because there’s something for everyone. (I dream about their hot pot)
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