Hui Guo Rou Deluxe

We take every opportunity to order twice-cooked pork, the favorite dish of Sichuan chefs for good reason. The only things they all have in common are pork belly, green garlic, Pixian douban and Sichuan douchi, but many cooks use that as a base for embellishments. This genius version features wide, diamond-cut rice noodles, while other recent versions we've had included fresh bamboo shoots or fresh, mildly hot, whole green chilies in abundance. 
 

Chef Wang Gang's Resto Specialties

Chef Wang uses Pixian douban in his Signature Swimming Fish, along with a boatload of xiao mi la dried chilies and green Sichuan pepper. While we add soft tofu to our shui zhu yu, he used strips of fresh tofu skin and vegetables along with the just-dispatched fish.

Because Chef is from Zigong, about 100 miles south of Chengdu, he also offers up Zigong specialties like this spicy rabbit (top left) with fresh chilies and a generous drizzle of green Sichuan pepper oil floating on top. His cold chicken is bony bits of meat and peanuts with a delicious chili-oil based sauce. (The only miss for me was his strangely sweet and soupy cabbage paocai.)

We recommend!  

Wang Gang Boiled Fish: 2, Yunying Road, Wuhou, Chengdu
 

Quintessential Sichuan 

Even though Yongle Restaurant has been open since 1985, we had never eaten there before. And boy, were we missing out. Everything that came to the table in this casual restaurant (which beckons invitingly with carved-wood facade, red lanterns and patient crowds) had the quintessential taste you hope for in these home-style classics. 

• The cold chicken here is long-cooked and thinly sliced, allowing maximum sauce coverage.
• The cold alkaline noodles topped with shredded chicken and cucumbers (recipe) had the perfect texture and sauce.
• The cold eggplant in a roasted green chili sauce was divinely smoky, spicy and sweet. 
• The stir-fried potato slivers had fresh green chili slivers as the slightly spicy counterpoint. 
• The paocai was spot-on, the naturally fermented radish, celtuce and carrot the ideal sour foil for the other dishes. 

It was so good, we tried to go back the next night and sample even more of the menu, but got there too late. Oh well, next time!

Yongle Restaurant: 36 Xiaojiahe Middle Road, Wuhou, Chengdu
 

Chengdu Wanza Mian

Unfortunately, I didn't record the name or address of this noodle place we stumbled on close to Taikooli, but they served up a superior bowl of Chengdu zajiang mian, in this case topped not just with the pork but also with wanza yellow peas that make a velvety blanket for the noodles when mixed up with the spicy sauce at the bottom.

When I shortly after had Chongqing xiao mian with the same toppings—which is basically the same dish—I got a full-on lesson in the difference between Chengdu and Chongqing food. While the Chengdu version was nicely mala, the Chongqing version dialed up the Sichuan pepper to 10. Super numbing it was—but also kind of irresistible. 
 

Jiangxi Rice Noodles

This photo is from last year, when we visited Jiangxi Province, but I wanted to show you that in lots of places around Southern China the standard noodle is made from starch, normally rice or potato. I believe these were rice, but our sweet potato noodles would also be a fab substitute for wheat in many "dry" sauced noodles. 
 

Guizhou Double Hot Pot

This back-alley hot pot in Guiyang was a memory-making feast, featuring not one but two hot pot soups unique to Guizhou. One (bottom in the photo) was the famed sour-soup broth, made with fermented tomatoes and fermented chilies. The second was a douchi hot pot, with a fermented soybean and pork broth. 

We have a recipe for the sour soup broth, which is also used for fish, beef and noodle dishes in Guizhou. Both the recipe and cultural context are fascinating. While you have to think ahead for this hot pot and ferment the base in advance, at least it's doable (and a great use for your upcoming tomato harvest). The fermented soybean broth, on the other hand, might not be. While it uses fermented soybeans, they are not the little black beans of Guangdong or Sichuan, but a brown, gooey, sticky bean that looks more like Japanese natto. All the more reason to visit Guizhou yourself. 
 

Chongqing Fish With a View

When in Chongqing, it's a good idea to ask native son Yao Zhao for restaurant recommendations. He pointed us up the hill behind the famous light-rail train that runs through an apartment building (Liziba Station) to an outdoor mom-and-pop place that specializes in fish. The meaty, boneless mountain-stream fish was super flavorful without being super spicy. It was joined by a dish of fried, chewy-bony pork nibs that got the laziji treament (i.e., covered in dried chilies) and a cold dish of century egg with chilies in a Sichuan chili-oil sauce. 

And speaking of Yao, his 50 Hertz Tingly Peanuts are back in stock, bringing a little Chongqing to you!