Sichaun Hot Pot (四川火锅)

We have now made our way to Chengdu in the Sichuan province. This city is a breath of fresh air. So far it seems cleaner and more organized, although part of that may be our nice hotel room.

After we got settled in from our trip, we headed out for dinner. One of the Sichuan specialties is hot pot. We had tried hot pot in Beijing but it didn't compare to the place we went to tonight. This restaurant claimed to be Chongqing inspired but we don't really know the difference.

Hot pot itself is quite simple. You just take raw veggies, meat, seafood, etc and boil them in your own pot until it is cooked. The guide book said the two things that make a hot pot place good are the sauce and the broth.

In Beijing the sauce came from a packet and was ok but nothing special. Today we got to make our own sauces from a self serve area. Mine had oil, peanuts, black pepper sauce, vinegar, some chillies and a bunch of other things. We each made two different sauces. The cooked food is dipped into the sauce before you eat it.

Here's all of the food we ordered. There's a big mushroom plate, potatoes, shrimp balls, crab, lettuce, and tofu. We went kind of light on the meat as there are some pretty interesting choices available.

Now the broth. You can choose between some plain (ie not spicy) options like chicken, vegetable or beef stock. Amy tried the Chicken one. Sichaun is known for the spicy food so I had the lowest spicy broth. This was a recommendation by several people before hand - the lowest level of spice is still insanely hot. As you can see from the picture it is a very red oily broth. It was delicious but I did shed a few tears. I think I lost weight from sweating too. I don't know if I'll be able to try the middle level of spice while we are here.

My pot cooking some Tofu and mushrooms. After this meal I see why hot pot is so popular! We will have to try and do it again while still sampling the other Sichaun cuisine.

We came to Chengdu with the intention of seeing (and meeting) some pandas. Tomorrow we will try to do that by heading north to one of the panda sanctuaries here. Amy is really looking forward to this so we may spend two days at different places to see the pandas. I'll write about our 熊猫 encounters as they happen.

谢谢你们告诉我生日快了！Thanks for the Birthday wishes.