What to Eat in Chengdu

Chengdu is a place full of delicious foods, here Top China Travel will recommend what to eat in Chengdu and tell you where you can eat them.

Chengdu Hotpot

Hotpot is very popular in Chengdu and is known for its spicy and hot flavor. Although this kind of hotpot is taken as the Chongqing specialty by the locals, it has become famous and popular all over the country for a long time.

 

A big pot filled with hot spicy oil and surrounded by plates of raw meats and vegetables. The pieces of meat and vegetables are sliced very small so they will cook very quickly. 

 

Most of the pots used in hotpot are divided into two sections. One half is filled with the spicy oil, and the other is filled with a delicious broth for those who are not a big fan of spicy foods. Restaurants are also more than happy to turn down the heat on request.

 

Huangcheng Laoma Hot Pot

Add: 20 Qintai Rd., Chengdu
Signature Cuisine: Chengdu Hot Pot

Huangcheng Laoma Hot Pot is a good restaurant to enjoy Chengdu hotpot. Elaborate restaurant featuring hot pot followed by live entertainment, including Sichuan face-changing.

Don't miss the diorama scene of ancient Chengdu built into the Huangcheng Laoma Hot Pot restaurant lobby's floor. A separate section on the ground floor of the restaurant also features a pan-Asian buffet with contemporary entertainment.

Chao Shou is also a local specialty. Commonly known in Canton and the West as "wonton soup", the dumplings bobbing in this light broth are soft, tender and stuffed with delicious ingredients. This is one traditional Chinese food that has remained relatively the same in Western Chinese restaurants.

 

Long Chao Shou is a little similar to dumpling, also stuffed with pork and vegetables, and the difference is that the dough is thinner and served in a soup. There are two kinds of soups available: spicy, or not spicy. Each one makes the dish taste completely different.

 

Long Chao Shou Restaurant

Add：No.68 south section of Chunxi Road, Jinjiang District, Chengdu (成都锦江区春熙路南段68号)

Signature Cuisine: Long Chao Shou

 

In the 1940s Zhang Guangwu, owner of the "Strong Scented Teahouse," founded a wonton restaurant in cooperation with others, named "Longchaoshou." The dumplings offered by the restaurant feature thin skin, tender stuffing and delicious soup.

 

Longchaoshou are famous snacks in Chengdu, there are many stores in the Chengdu city. Longchaoshou main store is near the Chunxi road, Qunguang department downstairs. Its location is the best, on holidays and festivals or weekend, it like the canteen here because of full of many people. On the first floor and negative first floor is a place to eat snacks, 2nd floor and above set the minimum consumption per person, such as the second floor is about 50 Yuan per person.

 

In Chengdu, if you miss to taste Ma La Tang, you will never touch the essence of the Chengdu eating culture.Ma La Tang is an excellent way to test your spicy food eating capacity. Enter in one of these restaurants, you may find guests eating large bowls of spicy chili peppers and other spices floating in boiling water over a flame.

 

Literally, "ma" means numbness in the mouth, "la" is chili hot and "tang" means piping hot. Ma La Tang, with various raw ingredients cooked in a communal pot of steaming stock blended with spices, originated in Sichuan's largest city, Chongqing.

 

You pick out as many skewers of meat or vegetables as you would like and then cook them in the pot yourself. Normally there will be a bowl of sesame oil, oyster sauce, and diced garlic to dip the food in to deaden the spiciness Diners cook their food right at the table in steaming Ma La Tang, a savory broth blended with the spices found in abundance in Sichuan.

 

Chengdu Yulin Chuanchuan Xiang

Add: No. 58 Yulin Street

Signature Food: Ma La Tang

Chuanchuan Xiang, or in another name called Ma La Tang, is very popular snack among Chengdu locals. Chengdu Yulin Chuanchuan Xiang is a restaurant that serves this traditional local food with a top taste.
 

 For a help-yourself style meal, you just go to a backroom and choose your own kabobs. Stick the kabobs into a hotpot soup, and have them boil. Pull them out and then you could enjoy it.

Think of it as a sort of fast-food version of Hot Pot, where, instead of necessarily sitting at a table and dining on a large quantity of food over a long period of time, one can purchase, for a fixed price, a given skewer of Chuanchuan Xiang (vegetables only skewers, meats (or poultry or seafood) only skewers, or mixed skewers). Chuanchuan Xiang can be bought at street stands everywhere, and also in traditional sit-down restaurants like Yulin Chuanchuan Xiang Restaurant, the most popular traditional restaurant in Chengdu serving Chuanchuan Xiang.

 

 

Chen Mapo Toufu is one of traditional dish of Han nationality in Sichuan and it is a China time-honored brand named by government. Chen Mapo Toufu was established in Qing dynasty (1862), and it was opened in the north of Chengdu. Chen Mapo Toufu was called Chen Xingsheng Eating House in the past; the chief was the wife of Chen Xingsheng. The Toufu cooked by Ms Chen is hot, spicy, fragrant, and soft and with good shape and full of Sichuan flavor. In a short time, Ms Chen’s Toufu was famous; many people went there to eat delicious Toufu. Some nosy people make fun of pockmarked face of Chen so that they called her Toufu “Mapo Toufu (Mapo means pockmarked woman in Chinese)”. And therefore, the eating house was named “Chen Mapo Toufu Restaurant”.

 

Chen Mapo Toufu Restaurant

Add: No.197, West Yulong Street, Qingyang District

Signature Dish: Mapo Tofu, Kung Pao Chicken (spicy diced chicken with peanuts)

Mapo Tofu in this restaurant is very delicious, hot and spicy with just the right flavor. Though the beef granules are not too much but they are big.

Dan dan noodles are very famous snack in Sichuan which has hundreds of years of history. It is said that in 1841, there was a vendor from Zigong called Chen Baobao as nickname, and he hawked this noodles on the shoulder with a carrying pole, therefore this noodles were named Dan dan Noodles (Dan means carrying pole in Chinese Character). Because originally named after the street selling their burdens. In the past, the street level of the dan dan noodles in Chengdu, with one in every two grid copper pots, a cooking grid, a grid knuckle of pork stewed chicken or stew. Now Chongqing, Chengdu, Zigong, dan dan noodles and other places, most shops have been changed to business, but still maintain the original characteristics, particularly characteristics of dan dan noodles in Chengdu, the most concentrated. 

 

Roll made with flour noodles cooked, scoop on the end of pork from frying. Thin noodles, sauce Suxiang, salty spicy, fragrant, very tasty. Widespread in Sichuan dish, it often served as a dessert banquet. The noodle is in good color and luster with sesame catsup aroma, spicy sour taste, it is fresh and not greasy, spicy but not dry which is outstanding in Sichuan-style pasta. In 2013, Dan dan Noodle has selected as one of “Ten Famous Noodles in China” by Ministry of Commerce and China Hotel Association for the first time.

 

Chengdu Dan Dan Noodles Restaurant

 

The restaurant is clean with large wooden tables and chairs, sitting here is also comfortable, but there are too many people, so maybe it is a bit noisy and the environment will feel so-so. The Dan Dan noodles here is a big difference in Beijing restaurant, Dan Dan noodles are dry, and it looks no sauce, but after you mix it will be very delicious.

 

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Bang Bang Chicken is a special Han nationality characteristic dish. It belongs to the cold dish of Sichuan cuisine, the main ingredients are chicken, its taste belongs to the "strange taste" that is spicy, hot, sour, sweet, fresh, salty, fragrant. This dish originated in the Ming and Qing dynasties before the edge of the Sichuan Minjiang Qingshen town of Hanyang, Hanyang chicken cook with raw material, after cooling cooked chicken, chicken gently with a wooden stick crisp knock, pull into the chicken, add Ma mixing spicy seasoning food, its taste spicy fresh, tender meat, fat, very welcomed by the people, in Sichuan dishes.  

It break through traditional snacks bottleneck and become a new mode suitable for catering for the modern way of life, the taste is unique. Bang Bang Chicken contains Sichuan classic cooked foods series, integrates cooking methods of stew in the soy sauce, stir and mix, soak and so on, which is a typical representative of the cooked food in Chengdu. Now, in Beijing, Shanghai and Sichuan, and many other large cities in both the food hall, but most were welcomed by the food. 

 

Liao’s Bon-bon Chicken

Add: No.106 first section of Hongxing Road, Jinjiang District, Chengdu

Signature Dish: Bang Bang Chicken

 

Liao’s Bang Bang Chicken known as the chain store is popular in Sichuan area, the streets of Chengdu also filled with Liao’s Bang Bang Chicken branches. The Liao’s Bang Bang Chicken located in the Hongxing road is the earliest shop, and its operation time is long. The store tidy up very clean, and provides thoughtful service.Bang Bang Chicken is the name of this store, the raw material is fresh, red oil is very sweet, and is also spicy.