Chengdu Restaurants

There are so many restaurants offering local spicy food, tasted but with low price. This one is so near my hotel so why not hv a try?
Remember you hv to help yrself to get the bowls and chopsticks from the dish sterilizer. The waitress will not help. :-O

This is more on the food, rather than the restaurant names...

I ordered frog legs cooked with the sichuan spices and I ended up using half a box of tissue, as amused locals (including the waitresses) watch me eat.
After that, they turned the same dish into hotpot - by adding water... then I started putting other fresh ingredients like beef, vege, etc in it...
Once boiled, and a few bites later, i started using up the other half of the tissue box...
All during autumn (about 20+ celcius at night)....

The beers are cheap ... a 600ml bottle (big) for RMB 10 in restaurants, and about RMB 15-20 in pubs - see nightlife section.

Remember the Spice Girls? Well those girls can't beat this Chengdu hotpot. I tried a spoonful of it and boy, it was definitely a mind-blowing experience that leaves my tongue and gum numb for half an hour before it comes to live again. Anything I eat at that time seems to be tasteless for awhile. I think it's a good idea to have this HOTPOT before one wants to visit the dentist for tooth extraction! At least, your gums are numb before the extraction and it saves you some money for the anaesthetic too. Ha! Ha! Ha!

Favorite Dish: P/S: Drink milk or soya bean drink to sooth the burn in your mouth; please don't try with gassy, soft drinks - you'll make it worse! Better still, make sure you have the Fire Dept. phone number in hand when you want to put out the 'fire' in your mouth.

This Sichuan hotpot is no ordinary hotpot - it has onion, garlic and chili, but also the mind-blowing seeds known as 'Sichuan Peppers' or "Huajiao"! In fact, you can request the waiter/waitresses (fuwuyuan) to reduce the amount of these seeds in your hotpot. If u can't take it but still want to try it, then take the half hot and half light, chicken stock hotpot. That's what we did. Unfortunately, some of the hot soup (while boiling, it did a high jump and landed the other side) sort of got into my chicken stock; hence, making it hot too.

Favorite Dish: Well, this hot pot is different from any other hot pots I've tried - these Sichuanese seems to favor an oily-red broth that can really set one's eyes stinging or on fire. My tourmate, HouJing, got her eye stung by one of the spurts made by the boiling, bubbling, fiery-like valcano broth that she needed to wash her eyes with plenty of water. As for me, I was choking unbearably with my eyes being smoked to tears - at that moment, I can almost hear the song "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" BUT I must admit the hot pot was GOOD!

To start off, u need to choose any restaurant (good and reputable) within Chengdu city and try their hot, sweating-like-sauna, local specialty hotpot. I thought it was going to be similar to the one I eat in Beijing since hotpot is generally a northern dish which usually contains boiling broth dipped with huge chunks of meats usually mutton or beef and some vegetables plus mushrooms.

Favorite Dish: It's a challenging dish that needs a lot of tolerance for its fiery, hot, burn, gum numbing effects - good to eat during winter though!

HOT POT doesn't necessarily mean that it's Sichuan hot. In most of the Chengdu hot pot restaurants where we dine you get a divided wok. One side is the sizzling hot chili oil and the other side is a sort of chicken stock. You can dip your food in the wild side or the mild side or both (meat, vegetables, whatever). So hot pot doesn't have to be so hot!

Favorite Dish: In Chengdu we've never had a bad meal or a big bill (by U.S. standards). I've enjoyed everything from hot pot to tofu restaurants (even Ma Po Tofu which can be pretty spicy). One place I really enjoy is the Minshan hotel. The restaurant on the top is elegant and not very expensive with lots of Chinese specialities. It's a great place to take guests because the view is wonderful (all around the city). Service is superb.

Another major hotel, the Jin Jang is also good but more expensive and not as good as Minshan. We did dine several times at the Jin Jang and once in their Japanese restaurant which I wouldn't recommend. It was OK but not up to what it should be at the price, I would only rate it as fair.

The real deal is at the smaller restaurants, and places like the Wenshu Temple which has a superb Buddhist vegetarian restaurant where you would swear there was meat in some of the dishes. They do a superb job of making vegetable / tofu seem like meat!!!

Among the eight major cuisines of China, Sichuan cuisine is the most popular.
Chuan Dish is an example of Sichuan cuisine. Sichuan cooking has a long history and has become famous for its special flavour. Sichuan is known for its attention to color, smell, and presentation with an emphasis on taste. Sichuan is well known for the richness, broadness and thickness of its taste. It is mainly composed of "numbing, hot, salty, sweet, sour, bitter and fragrant". The flexible combination of different flavors creates several compounded tastes such as numb and hot, sour and hot, red pepper oil and white pepper oil, among others. The richness and excellence of flavor helps rank Sichuan the top Chinese dish. It has won the praise of "one dish, one style, a hundred dishes, a hundred tastes".
Sichuan dish is good at agile exertion and specific managing according to material, climate and the diners' requests. More that 30 methods of cooking are included --- stir fry, sauté, deep fry, grill, preserve, bittern, bake and pickle.

As the production develops and economy prospers, Sichuan absorbs the strength of northern and southern food to form a fusion between a northern dish with Sichuan style and a southern dish with Sichuan taste. It is complemented as "Food in China, taste in Sichuan."

Sichuan concentrates on the changing of taste, which differs in thickness and heaviness. You can not make a Sichuan dish without chili, prickly ash and pepper. Chili, for example, can be used in various ways. Sometimes it can be the main ingredient, or sometimes it can be a secondary ingredient used for seasoning. The taste of Sichuan can differ largely according to climate and the diner's personal tastes. For instance, the hotness is quite rich in winter and spring because the weather is cold. However the hotness should be reduced by 30% in summer and autumn due to the warm and dry weather. The taste of Sichuan is very delicate and flexible. Therefore, Sichuan is famous for its rich, thick and heavy flavor in addition to its lightness.

Short on ambience but abundant with grime, Chen Ma Po Doufu's speciality is tofu with ground pork and chilli. Or more precisely, chilli with a little tofu and ground pork.

The chilli flavour is known as 'la'; the numbing Sichuan peppercorn flavour is known as 'ma'. Together in this quantity to a laowai like me, it's more like "ma la waaaaaahhhh!".

Spicy! Very spicy. Make sure you beg for a glass of peanut milk. But for less than a dollar, you can't go wrong and it totally cleared up my burgeoning cold.