A Taste of Chengdu
Small restaurants also play an important role in promoting Chengdu food. These restaurants, often around 10 square meters in size, look nondescript, sometimes even a little shabby. Rather than putting out advertisements to promote their food, they build their popularity on word of mouth. They provide customers with authentic Chengdu flavor and use decent ingredients but charge low prices. For example, there is a small place called Hou’s Maocai in the center of Chengdu that only sells boiled and steamed vegetables at low prices. You can feed yourself well on a tiny budget while enjoying a peaceful and happy mood under the sycamore trees outside.
As the saying goes, “Good wine needs no bush.” There is a small, shabby restaurant in a suburb outside Chengdu that has been a stop for many tourists for more than 60 years. There are only three items on the menu – RMB 2.5 beef offal soup, RMB 1 rice flour-coated steamed beef and RMB 1 guokui (large, round, baked wheat cake). It is located near an ancient site and is only two square meters big. Yet the owner has worked for more than 60 years on this one project. He uses only fresh beef to make the dishes and sticks to the traditional food culture of his home. This makes his little place a must for anyone who comes to Chengdu for a dining experience.
Passion for Food
With the increasing popularity of Chinese food culture around the world, Chengdu has gained reputation for its important role in the Chinese treasury of cooking techniques. The food culture of Chengdu makes up a major part of the city’s cultural foundation and charm. As the heart of Sichuan cuisine, Chengdu is one of the essential hubs of fine cuisines in China, and lives up to the reputation of “go for food in China, go for taste in Sichuan.” Chengdu has been a city of originality and innovation throughout history. It holds dozens of “firsts” in China and the world including the first Chinese winery, the first tea culture center and the first cuisine museum. Chengdu’s food culture speaks for its spirit of originality.
The spirit of innovation in Chengdu’s food culture is rooted in local people’s deep love for food. In Chengdu, ordinary householders, men and women alike, love to share their thoughts about new cuisine, bouncing ideas around as if they were professional cooks. Each family has its signature dishes such as bouilli and steamed pork with rice flour. Some recipes are handed down from their forefathers and have evolved over generations.
Chengdu people’s love for food is fervent. People who live in the “food capital” have the palates of natural gourmets. It is more than common to hear them talking about which restaurant is the best, where and how good a new restaurant is, or “hey, I came up with something new in my kitchen today!”
Ms. Fuchsia Dunlop’s love for Chengdu cuisine started with mapo tofu when she first visited the city in 1993. Then she began to learn to cook Sichuan cuisine and speak Sichuanese Mandarin. Now she comes to Chengdu as least once a year and has written two books about Sichuan cuisine – Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper and Sichuan Cookery. “It is fascinating how Chengdu cuisine has such abundant ingredients and flavors,” said Ms. Dunlop, “I am fascinated with Chinese food culture and the people’s dietetic life-nourishing ideas.”
