Vivian Wang
Came back to try a new dish, a special 9-type of beef hotpot. It includes beef ribs in the spicy soup base, with beef strips, rib slides, tongue, meatballs, tripe, tendon, honeycomb tripe, etc to add on. It also has a nonspicy soup base for cooking veggies stuff. A great combination for hotpot and beef lovers.
Chillicool is an authentic Sichuan restaurant nestled in the busy area of Kings Cross for many years, and it's a hidden gem for spicy food lovers. We come back frequently for some signature and new dishes. Some signature dishes worth recommending:
翘脚牛肉 slow-cooked beef soup
老妈蹄花 homemade pork trotter soup
Anna Joicey
Always passed this place walking to uni and back and finally went in with friends! The servers were lovely, all the dishes were a hit and had plenty veggie options.
Melvin Liam
Very good rabbit appetiser. Sweet, slightly sticky, and of course numbing sauce coated the delectable meat. The fried rice is sufficient for two, so I'd recommend that over white rice. Quite pricey but that might just be London prices. We also had 辣子鸡 unpictured. Pretty standard, but I'd recommend this place for anyone craving some 麻辣 taste.
Brittany lee
A Spicy Delight!
This canteen is a treasure trove for Chinese food lovers. They've nailed the spice game, infusing it beautifully in every dish. The food is consistently tasty, and the variety impressive. Service is quick, portions are generous, and prices are reasonable. If you're craving a spice kick, this is your go-to spot. Worth every bit of the 5-star rating!
Kerem Akdaş
Sichuan style battered chicken辣子鸡- 9/10
Cold platter 9/10
Sweet Rice Cake 8/10
Sichuan style aburgunie 8.5/10
Sichuan style Shredded Beef and Tofu 8.8/10
Richard Lewis
I got invited to come and try @chillicool_officialaccount near Kings Cross Station, serving proper sichuan cuisine. I had this amazing sharing platter to start, which had some great little dishes. The highlights were the pork ribs, crispy beef, pork dumplings, beef jerky, black bean rabbit, and pumkin cakes. Followed with homemade noodles in a peanut, chilli sauce, which was amazing. I really enjoyed trying all these different tastes and flavours of Sichuan
Check me out at Richard_lewis_eats on Instagram
Naomi Loo
I really enjoyed the Jumbal set menu for two, especially the ribs, shredded pork, glutinous rice sticks and sweet and spicy sauce noodles - highly recommend this dish!
The team were friendly and service was great!
Patrick Boyle
Never eaten Sichuan before. Wow!!!! Sooooo good! So many amazing tiny and bold flavours. Ps. Don’t ask for prawn crackers like I did.. it ain’t ya typical Chinese food.
Udomkarn Boonyaprasert
Good food, but some items on the menu are quite overpriced. We found the Beef and tripe to be especially nice; the protien was well cooked and the chilli sauce was amazing. But the assorted meat on a stick (40 sticks) in cool chilli to be rather expensive and the taste was kind of average. Plenty of seatings and friendly staff.
T Tang
The new beef rib hotpot is a must try. So good!
Clemens Lindner (Architect)
Very delicious and authentic Chinese restaurant. The 9 small dishes were really good. My favorite dish was the cold noodles. They are a bit spicy but the taste is outstanding! Definitely worth going again. Highly recommend;)
Daicy Hexiao Yu
I grew up eating Sichuanese food cooked by my grandma and it’s my favorite Chinese cuisine. The menu of this restaurant looked AMAZING and the smell of the food that other people ordered made me drool :’) sadly I was there alone so couldn’t order a lot. I only got the pork rib spicy noodles and it was DELICIOUS!!!! Definitely lived up to my high standards :) would want to come again.
Amberose He
We have tried the 9 squares Sichuan street snakes, basically it's Chinese style tapas, they are inexpensive, flavourful, small portion, and good with beer.
The set menu is £46.8 for two people, at the beginning my partner and I weren't sure will it be enough for us, but after we finished those 9 street snakes tapas+Bo Bo Chicken+sweet noodles+dessert, we don't have any space left in the stomach.
Really good value for money, very authentic as well.
Jenny Liu
Very authentic Szechuan food. However, we paid in cash and the waiter did not tell us it was 10% off when we pay cash and they charged 10% more on the full price for service charge.
Chris and Jun
The chili beef is hot and spicy but not too numbing - great flavors- not on the picture the beef in the pickled cabbage soup - my all time favorite! It’s worth to go!
Thomas Zhong
Authentic food at reasonable price.
Gio S
Been back after few years and I must say that I didn't have very good memories.
The food this Time was very nice.
Staff super friendly and accommodating considering the fact I had 2 children with me.
Yu Ding
Very delicious and authentic rice noodles! Other dishes are also great
Gautam Ghai
This was a surprise find - I've lived around the Bloomsbury for a while and have travelled all over London for my favourite kind of Chinese cuisine - i.e. Sichuan food. Chillicool - does really have a lovely ambience with a nice nook at the back for a relaxed lunch below their airy sky light. The food was a mix of traditional Sichuan food - they even had a veggie version of their Dan Dan noodles which are rare - LOVED IT.
Will be back again!
Kevin Tang
The quality of the food has seriously gone downhill from a couple of years ago. My most recent visit was in August 2015. I was disappointed by both the food and service.
My Chinese friend and I ordered a couple of dishes. One of which was a seafood tofu pot (cost around £10-15). The only seafood to be found was a 2mm prawn bit, and 3-4 crabsticks (which are technically not crab but fish paste). I asked the wattress who in turn asked the manager whether this is indeed the case. The answer was yes, the seafood tofu pot only has crabsticks as the seafood.
The restaurant has made no attempt to apologise for the quality of the dish nor offer an exchange for a different dish.
I shall not be returning to Chilli Cool and urge others to do the same.
Sarah-jayne Benfield
Great value, tasty and vegi - lovely service fast and friendly. No frills just proper Sichuan Food.
Jenny Lewenstein
amazingly good food, reasonalbly priced, swiftly served, not posh but who wants posh?
Gregory Flint
Reasonable food, rushed service but better than local competition.
Ismail Ismail
The chilli beef was breathtaking...
Eat Like Ushi
After taking the Eurostar back to St. Pancras, a heavily flavoured Chinese meal was beckoning. Szechuan is probably my favourite Chinese sub-cuisine and so it was time I tried one in London. It's a dingy looking place very typical of Chinese cheap diners. Funnily enough there was a non-Chinese speaking English waitress too. She did seem a little left out whilst the others were gossiping.
Felicia Tan
This was my first visit here and it was definitely what I needed to satisfy my chilli cravings.<br/>We ordered three dishes to share between the three of us plus steamed rice.<br/>The 'Sea Spicy Pork' was really tasty, marinated in fish sauce. Nice minced pork and a good level of spiciness.<br/>We ordered a bowl of mixed chef special soup (can't remember the exact name!) which was a huge bowl and definitely enough to be shared between us! There were plenty of different ingredients in it: beef, mushrooms, beancurd, black fungus, potatoes, tripe, cabbage, prawns etc...and the soup was also very moreish, so make sure you ask for a spoon to drink up!<br/>The third dish was a side of veg with garlic so we had a good balance of meat and veg...<br/>The food is good and also quite cheap (decent portions too!), coming up to about £12 per person for what we ordered.<br/>About a five minute walk from Kings Cross station so also a really convenient location.<br/>I would definitely recommend if you love spicy food as much as I do :)
Carolina Mesquita
We had pork noodles and for starter aubergine in a dark sauce, both very tasty and with intense flavour. It was a pitty that they just refused to change the pork for vegetables, as we requested, and the staff wasn't, in general, very nice...
American In London
A few weeks ago, I ate at Sichuan-heavy Ba Shan, where, except for the kung pao chicken, everything I ordered was mediocre and relatively pricey. And then I read this positive review of Chilli Cool Sichuan Restaurant by blogger, Mr. Noodles, who is a regu
Pipeperson
Good not!. My wife and I just had 2 takeaway dinners tonight from Chilli Cool on Leigh Street. A prawn dish and a box of rice each A good 40% of each prawn dish consisted of inedible pieces of chilli that tasted like cardboard. Hard as I tried impossible to eat or even chew, they tastedlike pieces of red plastic! I live around the corner on Judd Street, notice the buiness is often busy and thought we'd give it a try. Verdict - I wouldn't have another takeaway from Chilli Cool even if it was free. Can't for the life of me understand how they can stay in business. In fairness the rice was nice and prawns were good but I seriously had to spend over 5 minutes picking out the horrible hard tastless chillies so my dinner got cold. <br/><br/>sign me Unimpressed!
Erin Lewis-Fitzgerald
Too spicy for us. It was hard to enjoy the flavours because our mouths were on fire most of the time. If you do eat here, we recommend ordering the litre bottle of aloe drink to help you enjoy your meal - one glass is not enough.
Julia
Incredible depth of flavour. I just returned from a fantastic lunch - and spent £12 and am as full as can be. I shared Gong hao chilli chicken with peanuts, stir fried beans with pork mince and a pork mince and noodle broth. The bean and the noodles were the stand out - beautiful flavours - spicy and smoky but not overpowering. The chicken was good - but not a stand out. But still, I can see this becoming a favourite very quickly.
Warbiz
Great great great!. This is one of my favourites, a small, spicy unpretentious gem tucked away near Kings Cross. This place is proof that szechuan chinese food can chuck a chilli hit in your direction to rival any indian you care to mention. It's great. <br/><br/>I really enjoyed the dry fried beans with minced pork and chilli on my last visit so ordered this again. Alongside this, we chose sliced beef szechuan style lavishly garnished with chilli and szechuan peppercorns. It's important to make clear for the uninitiated that this is one spicy concoction - you may need a good supply of water to handle the heat! We also chose shredded pork with pickled vegetables and noodles. It was lovely if a little strange together with our spicier choices.. <br/><br/>This was more than enough food for the pair of us and I'm happy to report that my second visit to this place was just as good as my first. I took a few shots and have uploaded them to the site here. For those of you who enjoy a chilli kick with your chinese, get along to chilli cool, you won't regret it.
Tangmanstyle
Tender spiced lamb in a soft bun, smothered with riatha and an apple and pear chutney. Innovative, but not quite as good as a traditional jalfrezi from Dishoom.
NC
I find Sichuan food really boring, oddly I think this is because the flavours are too strong, too sweet and too rich. Sichuan dishes are always too monotonous in taste, texture and even appearance, It's always a big bowl of oil and gravy with a few bits of cheap meat and a stack of chilli. Chilli Cool lived up to all of the above. The 'Sliced beef Szechuan style lavishly topped with chilli & Szechuan pepper' was a big bowl of bland oily brown sauce with chewy, flavourless and pretty sparce meat. The King Prawns in Cantonese sauce came on a bed of about 40 chillies, we were not game to eat the chillies, the prawns were shallow fried in their shell and kind of tasted like a KFC Hot wings, this is kind of a good thing. I enjoyed the aubergine in yellow bean sauce, a nice mix of the salty and sticky, good texture and not served with gallons of sauce, oil or chilli's. Chilli Cool is not actually that cheap.
Paul Hart
Chilli Cool is a small and very unassuming venue, much like any provincial Chinese restaurant you really aren’t aware of how much of a treat you are in for until the food hits the table. Luckily for me Lizzie was on the ball and had planned out a selection of dishes that we had to try.
Thea
It was Mr Noodles's review of Red 'N' Hot that finally made me visit Chilli Cool. I had read enough positive reviews to formulate a vague notion to visit for myself. But it was the possibility that it might out-cook Red 'N' Hot that made me call Mr Fork a
HungryinLondon
I was in desperate need for spicy food and what better place could there be than a Sichuan restaurant called Chilli Cool ? Especially as it has been favourably reviewed by a horde of fellow bloggers and they are usually not wrong. You have to know about t
Mzungu
I've finally made it to Chilli Cool. Finally I stepped through the door, sat down and ate. Guess what. I never wanted to leave. I think I've found my new fave restaurant in the world. My other one is all the way over in Hammersmith, and shall forever remain one of my treasured places, but it's just too far away. I need somewhere close, or at least closer to home. Although the Regent is closer, but how many times a week can I eat pizza? Chilli Cool felt right, the staff were friendly, the menu reads like poetry, the food sent me to heaven. OK slight over exaggeration there. The food was not knock your socks off, but it was pretty damn good, and I got the wife to eat tofu, which after her attempt at eating stinky tofu in Chengdu, she vowed never to touch the stuff again. It was really stinky. To be honest we were not that hungry, we just wanted a quick bite to eat on the way home, and I didn't fancy yet more Turkish kebabs or pide. Anymore and I'll start looking like one. No we wanted so
Greedy Diva
To say Chilli Cool is a no-frills restaurant is something of an understatement. But then, the aftermath of eating Sichuanese food over a white table cloth would just be humiliating. This is a place to load up a big table with friends, feast messily on pla
Thelondonfoodie
I first learnt of Sichuanese Cuisine when reading Fuchsia Dunlop’s book “Sharks Fin and Sichuan Pepper”. Fuchsia is an engaging writer – it was great fun reading about her adventures as a Westerner living in Chengdu, and learning about Sichuan and its cui
Mr Noodles
Chilli Cool is one of a new breed of Chinese restaurants popping up across London that cater to a largely mainland Chinese crowd. It's particularly popular with University of London students as its Leigh St location is very close to the Halls of Residence
London Chow
After my wetting my tastebuds for Sichuan food at Empress of Sichuan, I am totally game for more Sichuan cuisine after coming across London Foodie's review of Chilli Cool at Bloomsbury. Unlike London Foodie who visited Chilli Cool during the dead of winte
Catty
The stand out dishes for me were the hot & chilli crispy pork intestines, spicy aubergine, and dry fried green beans, but the dish of the night, and Sung’s favourite, had to be the fish cooked in fresh chilli and chilli powder which is served in regular o
Melanie Seasons
After a lunch and vodka tasting at Bob Bob Ricard , a trip around the Eye , a bottle of wine at Gordon's Wine Bar and some more drinks around King's Cross, some random Chinese food sounded really good. With Chinatown being oh-so-far-away, I took a quick l
Pig Pig's Corner
The cooks don’t pull any punches when it comes to flavours and the style is very simple and basic but that doesn’t mean it’s bad at all.
Canelvr
"This is lush," said my vegetarian friend, tucking into a plate of sea spice aubergine at Bloomsbury Sichuan restaurant Chilli Cool. "Really, really good. I wonder what those little bits are." She pulls a fleck of grey out the syrupy red sauce with her ch
Gourmet Chick
The thing about chillis is that they are addictive. Start off eating them and the heat will be too hot to handle, but after a while your taste buds become desensitised and you need hotter and hotter chillis to get your heat fix. Maybe that was the problem
Helen
The Ledbury and Chilli Cool. Couldn’t be more different. I often have a little mental wrestle with myself about which style of food is ultimately more satisfying; is it the exacting refinement of fine dining or is it the generosity and un-fussed comfort o
Hollowlegs
Chilli Cool has been on my restaurant 'Want-To-Go' list for ages. I first heard about it from Niamh , who said that she had such a good meal here. I love Sichuanese food, ever since I got Fuschia Dunlop's Sichuan Cookery book. I can't say I remember eatin
Laura Fitzpatrick
I'm not a big fan of chinese food but had high hopes of this place. When we arrived there were several large groups and a few couples, it was refreshingly busy for a fairly out of the way location and I was delighted to find an area of Bloomsbury where al
World Foodie Guide
Background: Having walked past Sichuan restaurant Chilli Cool many times since it opened, I always thought it looked rather intriguing. After studying the menu at length (there are takeaway-style menus you can pick up), I decided to visit with a friend. I
Kristainlondon
The Background: After dropping a whole lotta change at Kai in Mayfair with Alice and Cara a few months back, we had agreed that our next stop should be a bit more of the cheap-and-cheerful variety. You might know that I like spicy, so when Alice suggested
Cheese And Biscuits
Chilli Cool (stupid name I know - apparently it sounds a lot nicer in Mandarin) sits just a few doors down from the Black Books bookshop in Bloomsbury, and by all accounts is cheaper, better and more authentic - largely, I'm guessing, because it's not in
Keith Lindley
This is a gem. Not many Europeans here, just the natives ! Full of students (mostly oriental). <br/>AMAZING hotpots. Love them all. £22 will feed 3 people (with rice). <br/>Mains need to be ordered separately or it all comes at once. Bass with pork mince is brilliant as is the aubergine. Can be spicy, but I like that. <br/>Service is typical Chinese - but just look offensive with a chopstick and they come straight away!<br/>Apparently the chicken gizzards are good, but I'll stick to the hotpots. <br/>Love it !<br/>
Lillian
Droppped by here because I was attending an event nearby after work. I had been craving Sichuan food after researching about hot pot for a group dinner. Since I was by myself I just ordered the rice noodle in hot spicy soup with pork intestine. Oh man, it was so hot and spicy, just as you'd expected from Sichuan. I thought I could die before finishing eating and had to be really careful not sip too fast or fear getting into an induced coughing fit.<br/>I have grown up with eating pork intestine, it's one of my favourite street food stall dishes. I don't know why I like it so much, its not much to look at but the fattiness and the chewy texture is like nothing else. I quite enjoyed it here but I was a bit disappointed there was only a few pieces. Finally I'm a big fan of the (flat) rice noodles, however the noodles here were actually (rice) vermicelli which was also disappointing (for me).<br/>Even thought the restaurant looked small on the front it has more tables at the back. The service was adequate and fairly fast. There was one new waitress who was not Chinese and seemed a bit odd to work here as she was being guided on what to do by the (only) most English fluent waiter.<br/>I couldn't comment on their other dishes but from what I could see they looked authentic and full of colours. They probably catered to the home-sick students in this area and had many such groups coming through.<br/>PS their menu now has all the pictures.
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