Grand Sichuan St Marks - Cumin Beef = Great Dish

[Lau]

Grand Sichuan on St Marks can be fairly streaky, their menu has changed several times and i've had good and mediocre meals there. Luckily, I have a waiter there who i know from the 50 st branch who almost always comes through with dish recommedations and getting me stuff off the menu that is good.

So, I saw an interesting dish (they now have tons of pics of the dishes on the menu) that caught my attention b/c a) it looked exactly like my favorite dish at szechuan gourmet and b) it had mantou (steamed buns) and i like almost anything involving mantou. He said it was very good, so i ordered it. It's listed as the "cumin beef". Its very similar to the "cumin lamb" at Szechuan Gourmet. It comes with 4 pieces of mantou and some vegetables to put in the mantou with the beef. The beef is dry meaning its not in a sauce, its covered in cumin and spices and i believe sauteed with some oil (not oily at all). It's fairly spicy, but it has a great flavor...i highly recommend going there for the dish

We also had a spicy chicken dish (it was good, but not great and not nearly as good as one of the freshly killed chicken dishes i used to get at the now defunct 50th st branch) and we got a vegetable / tofu casserole, which is actually a soup / stew, which was also excellent and a nice light complement to the beef

[spchang]

For your information, I once ordered that dish with lamb instead of beef, so they're willing to make the substitution. I thought it was quite good, but a bit much if you're mainly eating that.

[Lau]

agreed, i shared the dish

[Striver]

I had a good cumin beef at the new Ollie's Sichuan on 9th and 42nd. It's listed on the menu as something like "beef with cumin and sliced peppers", but actually the beef is thinly sliced and the peppers are more like a dice. Plenty of heat, lots of cumin. Liked it a lot.

[Pan]

I agree. That is a very good dish, though a bit salty.

[kathryn]

Which spicy chicken dish did you get? I usually get the Gui Zhou spicy chicken and feel like it has lost some of its heat over the last year or so. Not that it doesn't hit the spot, but I'm curious if there's something better I'm missing out on.

[Lau]

not exactly sure b/c it wasn't on the menu, i explained to him that i wanted something similar to a dish they had at the 50th st branch (they don't have it at the st marks branch, its not the gui zhou chicken, its just diced chicken with peppers, very simple dish, but was very well prepared at the 50th st branch), he said they can make something similar but that it would be more spicy, so i agreed to try it. its wasn't super spicy either.