All that walking around the charming city of Chengdu has made me hungry. Now, I am ready for some excellent Sichuan food right at the heart of it all. One of the long time restaurants here is the Chen Mapo Tofu 陈麻婆豆腐 restaurant. Fortunately we are armed with a map to help us find the place.
According to the map, it is just a couple of blocks north of the statue of Mao Zedong, which is where we were. We just kept following the main road all the way up north. Then we realized how Chinese maps are never drawn to scale. Just traversing a block takes us a more than a while. We passed a huge stadium which was no operating at that time. Now, we were no longer sure where the place is since the map is not that reliable. The roadside eateries are beginning to look very tempting.
Just when we hit a main road where we thought the restaurant was supposed to be, we couldn’t find it. Could it be that they have shut down and the map was not updated? I walked to the next block and discovered where they were. Finally, after exploring Chengdu on foot we can start eating.
I ordered their specialty Mapo Tofu, as I have talked about earlier, this can be considered the signature dish of Sichuan. Red. Salty. Spicy. Numbing. And what better place to try it out than the very place where it was invented. Yes, it is said that this is the place where the dish was invented.
It was supposedly invented by a pockmarked old lady serving the salty and spicy dish to workers. Apparently word spread around about this dish and it has spread all around the world. The serving here in Chen Mapo Tofu restaurant isn’t that huge then again, this is high quality mapo tofu we’re talking about here. The tofu was soft and the sauce was salty, spicy and numbing just the way I wanted it to be. I will say that it is the best Mapo Tofu I had, ever.
Next dish is a spicy dish made from rabbit. Yes, I eat rabbit. And I’m sure you’ve heard this before, it tastes like chicken. The dish is made from bony parts of the rabbit, which made eating the dish quite a chore. The Chinese value the meat closest to the bone as the tastiest and it follows for any kind of animal. Fortunately the rabbit dish wasn’t that deadly spicy because the next one was.
Final dish was a fish on barbeque sticks with Sichuan spices on top. I’m not fond of eating fish, especially if they still have bones but I needed to try this. The fish was the fresh water type so it was also a little bony. Sichuan is a land locked province so most of their fish come from rivers. Of course, salt water fish can still be “imported” from the coast. As expected, the fish was tasty because of the spices, but as we kept eating I noticed that the spice kept getting more and more deadly. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, I had to scrape the spices on top and eat the fish instead. I seldom back off from spice, but this was something else.
My friend isn’t as big an eater as I am, so I ended up having to finish all of the food. Not that it was a problem for me. By this time, the restaurant was already cleaning up all the other tables. There were only a handful of customers left. Fortunately, we were already done, and having finished all of the food, I really needed to walk it off.
That dinner was one of the best meals I’ve ever had. It is too bad they do not have branches outside of China, yet. I’m sure that Chen Mapo Tofu isn’t even considered good by Chinese standards. To think that there can be anything better than that boggles the mind. This will be our last night in Chengdu since we will be leaving for Jiuzhaigou the next day. I will remember this meal for a long, long time.
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