Sichuan Cooking

Mala is the pairing that defines it: la, the burn of dried chilli, over ma, the cold tingling numbness of Sichuan pepper, which is not a pepper at all but a husk that fizzes on the lips. Chillies only reached China a few centuries ago, so the older layer of the kitchen works with pickles, fermented broad bean paste from Pixian, preserved vegetable and vinegar. Cooks name and learn some two dozen flavour profiles and only a few are hot: fish-fragrant sauce contains no fish, and strange-flavour sauce balances six tastes at once. Hotpot is the social form, a split pot of chilli oil and clear broth with raw plates ordered to it. Chengdu was named a UNESCO City of Gastronomy in 2010.

What you actually see

• Hotpot - a split pot of chilli oil and clear broth, cooked at the table over hours.
• Mapo tofu - soft curd in bean paste, chilli and pepper, eaten with rice rather than alone.
• Dan dan noodles - a small bowl of sesame, chilli and preserved vegetable, mixed before eating.
• The pickle jars - fermented bean paste and vegetables carrying the non-spicy half of the kitchen.

When to go

Year round, though the wet Sichuan summer makes a chilli-oil hotpot heavy going. Meals are shared, and hotpot in particular needs three or four people before it is worth ordering. Teahouse snack streets serve small plates through the afternoon, which suits solo eaters far better than the evening restaurant format.

Honest expectations

The heat is not adjustable in most kitchens, a clear broth side is the only real escape, and the numbing pepper unsettles people more than the chilli does. Hotpot oil gets into clothes and hair and stays there. Menus outside the tourist streets are Chinese only, and restaurants aimed at visitors dial everything down noticeably.

Nearby

Chengdu's teahouse parks and the panda base pair with it; Chongqing does the hotter hotpot.