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Chongqing Food Is Hot Stuff…
By estar | September 2, 2007
Whenever Sichuan cuisine is mentioned, everybody immediately goes “ma la” - translated into English as “numbingly spicy”. On a recent business trip to Chongqing, China, I grabbed the opportunity to experience the cuisine’s well-deserved reputaton.
Like all Chinese, Chongqingers love their noodles. The key difference is that their version of “dan dan mian” (pictured above) comes swimming in chili oil.
In Chongqing, appearances are deceiving. This innocuous-looking cold appetiser of enoki mushrooms was hot, hot, hot! See the green vegetable bits in the dish? Those are actually pickled green chilies!
This pork dish (below) was similarly misleading. Look carefully at the ‘green bell peppers’ - they’re also green chilies! I know some people consider the chili a vegetable but this was taking it a little too literally. How does anyone eat a whole plate of chilies?
Finally, here’s an unusual take on “fried rice”! Not the typical savoury dish we’re all used to, but a dessert of ’deep-fried rice’ which are actually cooked rice grains packed into squares, battered and deep-fried. Eaten with peanut powder and sugar, this was one of the few non-spicy dishes on the menu.
The great thing about Sichuan cuisine is that despite tongue-burning ‘torture’, the food is always flavourful. I’ll be back for more.
January 11th, 2008 at 3:32 am
OMG…
miss chongqing and qongqing’s food so much..
i love my hometown!!!
January 17th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
hi loveyiwang! thanks for dropping by! so you’re fr chongqing? what else would you recommend that i try the next time i visit there?