Little Pepper began life a dozen years ago in the competitive Chinese nucleus of downtown Flushing, Queens. Five years ago, Cheng Ying Wu and her husband, Gui Ping Huang, the owners, moved it northwest to College Point, where its nearest rival is a graffiti-scrawled storefront across the street selling takeout chop suey and chow mein. Little Pepper is not entirely free of American Chinese food, but its pork lo mein is not one of its chief attractions.

The reason to drive to College Point Boulevard (by far the easiest way to get to Little Pepper, about a 20-minute bus ride from the nearest subway stop) is to eat undiluted Sichuan cooking, like silken tofu with scallions. Little chilled blocks of tofu will be covered with scallions and chopped peanuts turned the color of bricks by chile oil. Woven through the burning heat of the oil will be the unmistakable, medicinal hum of Sichuan peppercorns. The crunch and burn and throb of the sauce crashes against the soft and passive tofu; the contrast enhances both.

Or the kitchen may take another slab of silken tofu and do something else. This time it will be warm, in bigger chunks that cleave into two pieces at the touch of a spoon. The dressing will be tangy bits of ground pork in black vinegar and a shimmering gloss of chile oil. The dish, of course, is ma-po tofu. At Little Pepper, it combines power and nuance to make other renditions around the city seem heavy-handed.

Some New Yorkers grade Sichuan food by its firepower. When their tongues have been reduced to smoldering ruins, they declare themselves (through sign language) to be in a great restaurant. Little Pepper is capable of inflicting great pain when needed. Its Chong Qing chicken, which weaponizes capsaicin in just about every known form and should not be faced without a full glass of water or beer at hand, is proof of that. But what sets Little Pepper apart from the many other good Sichuan restaurants in the city is its skill at bringing spicy forces into tense alignment with sweet, sour and salty ones.

It’s possible that the chefs at Little Pepper cook with extra precision because real estate is cheaper in College Point than in Flushing, allowing the owners to spring for the roomy, shipshape kitchen in the back. This at least is what I tell myself as I’m driving past the exit for Flushing and Little Pepper is still another 15 minutes away.

I’ve always found a parking space within sight of the front door, which doesn’t often happen in downtown Flushing. Inside, there is art everywhere: a mural of oversize peonies in red and pink; small canvases of an empty, wrinkled red plastic bag and a still life with Spam; a larger painting of a crushed Coke can over the round table where in quiet moments the employees top and tail a heap of beans for the excellent dry-sautéed string beans.

English is not one of the restaurant’s core competencies. In the middle of my last lunch there, a waiter handed the phone to one of my guests. What did he want? It was unclear at first. Eventually an odd relay game began; my guest talked to a customer who was trying to place a takeout order, then looked for each dish on the menu and pointed. Finally the waiter wrote it down. It took about five minutes. When the customer walked in to get his food, it was like seeing a minor celebrity.

I don’t recall what he ate, but everything I had is bright in my memory. First, super-crisp scallion pancake wedges dunked in a black, tangy, syrup-thick sauce. Then thin, chewy slices of beef tendon in chile oil, classic and great. Thin-skinned dumplings of juicy, sweet pork followed, resting in a pool of vinegar and chile oil. Sautéed snow pea leaves were next, and too salty.

At last a big main course: “lamb with hot and spicy sauce,” also known as cumin lamb because that spice dominated the intensely fragrant dry rub clinging to the tender strips of meat. (There was no sauce to speak of, just stir-fried onions and green chiles.) And a whole fish hidden below fiery ground pork sauce, lip-smacking and deeply flavorful, like a Bolognese by way of Chengdu.

The fish at Little Pepper often tastes muddy. The sauces, though, are so transporting that it doesn’t matter very much. And while not every dish on the menu is the best in town — the shredded potatoes with green peppers are pretty bland — the overall energy and variety of the cooking more than makes up for it.

With so many peppers whiplashing around, the mouth needs something mild for balance. Tea-smoked duck dripping with warm fat is a fine and soothing appetizer. Cold smashed cucumbers with garlic are turning up in non-Chinese restaurants now, but few improve on the ones at Little Pepper. Corn kernels stir-fried with pine nuts are strangely easy to get along with. Fried rice, cooked with so much finely minced scallion that it turns the color of a Shamrock Shake, is a superb mop for fiery sauces.

On some days, I have gone giddy for the eggplant, as soft as pudding and slick with garlic sauce. On others, I’ve been sweetly captivated by the riddle of preserved eggs with green peppers. The riddle is not how the egg whites turn dark brown and transparent, while the yolks go creamily soft and ash-colored; that’s explained by the chemistry of a pH shift. What I can’t figure out is why the eggs’ mild whiff of sulfur is so appealing when they are eaten together with chopped mild green chiles and decidedly unmild red chile oil.

But this is nothing compared with the enigma of Little Pepper’s “fried potato in hot sauce.” These are crinkle-cut French fries that, as far as I can tell, come out of a bag stored in the freezer. They are dark and ragged with a dry spice mix of coarsely ground cumin, roasted dried chiles, Sichuan peppercorns, salt and maybe MSG.

The questions torture me. How did crinkle-cut fries get into a Sichuan restaurant? How can I be so helplessly, irretrievably crazy about them? Why, when they cool and lose their allure, do I want to ask the waiter to drop them back into the fryer again? Is something wrong with me? What is this wild desire? And where is the hot sauce?