Szechuan Restaurant, a west Fort Worth landmark once considered the city’s best restaurant for Chinese food, has changed ownership after 45 years, according to an application for a city liquor license.
Cynthia Quintana Pena has applied for a new permit for the same location, 5712 Locke Ave., and will continue to use the Szechuan name.
The restaurant will remain open daily. Pena said during a busy dinner hour on Sunday that she was not yet ready to talk about the change.
Szechuan has been run by staff led by Shuoh “Paul” Cheng since the retirement of his late uncle and co-founder Herman Liu five years ago.
The restaurant features photographs of prominent guests from the late 20th century, including politicians, contestants in the Miss Texas Scholarship Pageant, pianists in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and actors performing in the Casa Mañana musicals.
In recent years, more elegant Chinese and pan-Asian restaurants have opened in the suburbs, and the new Teddy Wong’s Dumplings & Wine is currently Fort Worth’s dumpling favorite.
But the original Sichuan location remains a popular haunt for spicy Sichuan-style dishes such as garlic chicken, spicy green beans, shrimp with spicy ginger sauce, and shredded beef with hot peppers.
The restaurant is also known for its inexpensive lunches and popular Chinese-American dishes, such as sesame chicken (the number one dish) and orange chicken.
Chinese restaurants have been around in Fort Worth since the early 20th century, but until 1977 they primarily served milder Cantonese and Mandarin-style food.
At that time, Liu moved from China and Taiwan to Fort Worth via Washington, DC and opened Hunan Chinese restaurant on South Hulen Street.
On May 21, 1979, Liu and Henry Chang opened Szechuan, replacing a Cajun restaurant in the Locke-Blocke shopping center on Camp Bowie Boulevard at Horne Street.
Chef Lee Tsao was a friend of Liu’s from one of Washington DC’s highest-rated Chinese restaurants, the Empress.
Sichuan food is “characteristically hot and spicy,” the Star-Telegram explained.
“…Many of our customers who like Mexican food” like the dishes, Liu said.
A location in the Cityview Centre, 4750 Bryant Irvin Road, opened in 1981 but was sold to another restaurateur years ago. A Hurst location opened in Mayfair Village in 1983 and closed around 2005.
Szechuan is open daily for lunch and dinner; 817-738-7300szechuanrestauranttexas.com.
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