London Authentic Sichuan Chinese Restaurant – Tian Fu

One of the oldest and reputable Sichuan Chinese restaurant in west London.

Want to know where to find some good authentic Sichuan restaurants in London? It does not always have to be in China town! The one S visited today was Tian Fu which is close to the Westfield mall and Shepherd’s Bush underground station in west London. The chef in Tian Fu was from Chengdu, China, the home of Sichuan cuisine. Therefore, S won’t doubt the authenticity of the taste.

There are 2 floors in the restaurant, the ground floor and the basement. Like many other Chinese restaurants, there are two types of meals you can choose from. One is all-you-can-eat hot pot, another one is ordering sharing dishes. You can see the sharing menu on their website, and S will provide the hot pot menu from Zomato since it’s not visible on their website. The dishes S ordered were Gong Bao Chicken with peanuts (£8.9), Ma Po tofu (£8.9), dry-wok special sauce beef (£12.9) and fried rice (£3.8).

The first dish was Gong Bao chicken with peanuts which was different than S expected. The taste of vinegar was way stronger than any Gong Bao chicken that S has had so far. Moreover, the dish was more moist than S thought it would be. The dish was good but due to S’s preference, S wouldn’t really recommend it.

The fried rice here was good because it was not too salty. S noticed that Chinese restaurants tends to use salt instead of soy sauce compared to Taiwanese restaurants when making fried rice. Moreover, S preferred the texture of the fried rice here which was more grainy and firm. The one portion of fried rice here is for 1 to 1.5 people which is not too big.

The most disappointing dish for that day was this one; the dry-wok special sauce beef. Since S has never tried dry-wok before, S didn’t really know what to expect. However, the reasons S didn’t like this dish was because the beef was just really dry, even a bit like beef jerky. However, the ingredients were quite generous in this dish which had lotus, potatoes and some other spices. S will probably choose different type of dry-wok to try it out next time!

The dish which surprised S the most that day definitely was the Ma Po tofu. S has never thought Ma Po tofu could be THIS good! Instead of the spicy hot, this dish was more of tongue-numbing because of the Sichuan Peppercorn. S can literally finish 2 bowls of rice with this dish. This is definitely the best Ma Po tofu S has ever had!

S has also tried the hot pot here which you can alter the spice level if you want it to be more spicy. Both the hot pot and sharing dishes were pretty good from S’s experience. S would definitely visit here again to try some other Sichuan dishes, or even just for their Ma Po tofu.

Restaurant info: 
Address: 39 Bulwer Street, W12 8AR London 
Phone: 020 8740 4546/020 8743 0063
Opening hours: Mon.-Sun. 12:00-10:30pm 
Site: https://www.tianfulondon.com