TL’s Four Season’s located in downtown Bartlett is a hot place to go if you are up for some Chinese and Japanese dishes. When you first walk in, you are welcomed by a server that will try and sit you as soon as possible. We went on a Thursday and by the looks of it, it was really crowded and the wait for us to be seated was about five minutes.  After being seated, we decided to look around the place to see what TL’s was all about and to our surprise it looked much different than what this reviewer thought it was going to be.

As we looked around, we saw a bar accompanied by some TV screens, and some pictures of Japanese art hanging on the surrounding walls.

After waiting about 15-20 minutes to get our order taken, we decided to order and sampling of dishes. First off, we decided to get was the Sichuan dumplings, made out of house-made chicken dumplings in a sweet and spicy soy garlic sauce. This was amazing and something I would definitely come back for. The dumplings reminded me of something that you would find in a Italian restaurant, however, the soy sauce gave it the Japanese inspiration it needed, making the dish about 100 times better; absolutely recommended.

TL’s menu is rather large; have both Chinese and Japanese dishes along with a full sushi menu that caters to some of the unusual sushi out there such as sea urchin and quail egg.

The salmon was delicate, buttery and melted in your mouth. It tasted extremely fresh and that was a very positive sign for the rest of the meal. Traditionally, you should consume the fish lightest to darkest but in an informal setting like this it doesn’t really matter. Next we moved on to the smoked salmon, which has a wonderful smoky flavor with a melt in your mouth finish. Moving on to the tuna, which is a staple, but will either be amazing or awful. This time around it tasted fresh, had a firm texture and tasted like it was definitely a recent caught fish in its prime.

The spicy tuna rolls had a delightful heat and nice sauce that didn’t overpower the taste of the fish but left a nice feeling of warmth. Finally was a roll special to TL’s called the ‘Chicago Fire’, which is a tempura fried spicy tuna roll that’s soaked in a sesame-soy sauce mixture. It had an amazing spicy yet salty yet savory flavor that could only be described as umami.

Although the wait was fairly long to even get the menus and the service seemed sub-par, the food was lovely. However, it was a bit pricey if you choose to go the sushi route. This would be a great place for a once-in-a-while splurge or a special occasion.