Shawn Cafe - Arcadia

They have a recent change in ownership. So the place is completely remodeled. Great place! Price is fair, taste is good, and portion is big!

Amazing Sichuanese restaurant. The portion is huge! Price very reasonable. The restaurant looks brand new. The servers were so nice and friendly, it’s the only Chinese restaurant i have ever been to that the servers come over to check on us without us waving them down. Highly recommend. Would definitely come back!

I received a notification of a new Sichuan spot that opened recently in #Arcadia so went to scope #shawncafe out. The fish fillet in hot pot with pickled cabbage, pepper chicken, dry fried cauliflower and spicy noodles in vinegar were all legit. Def coming back to try their other dishes.

Nice and lovely place, they serve delicious food if you love spicy

This is your typical Taiwanese style eatery with a few other styles thrown in. They've been running a promo (10% off dinner or buy 3 get 1 free for lunch) to celebrate their third year in business since December 2015. Parking is in the rear of the building for all the businesses along this row. There's a big banner hanging over the rear entrance with the promo details. Service was prompt and attentive which was expected since we were the only patrons at 12:30pm on a Thursday. The only time we had to wave the server down was for the check. We ordered the fried stinky tofu, beef noodle soup, a vegetarian dish, and oyster pancake. I believe the dishes came out in that order too. We were served the usual starch-thickened appetizer soup. It took a while for the orders to come out but once they did they came out in quick succession. The stinky tofu was decent. The cubes were slightly crispy on the outside, moderately dense on the inside, and weren't dripping with oil. The odor was on the milder side. The beef noodle soup used a thin noodle in a mala-spiced broth that was numbing but not very spicy. It was odd seeing all that chili oil but not registering much heat in my mouth. The meat was gristlier and sparser than I would care for. Some people like that jaw-popping chewiness but I prefer larger chunks of meat. The vegetarian dish was solid. It wasn't heavy on salt and oil and had a lot of black fungus and mixed vegetables. The oyster pancake was decent. The potato starch to egg balance was different from what I'm used to. It turned out very flat, chewy, and hard to cut but thankfully not very slimy. Overall not wow'ed by our selections but we may be back to try out other dishes if they survive into their fourth year. The amount of competition in the area leaves few customers willing to put up with mediocre food.