With our aborted trip to Jiuzhaigou still fresh in our minds, my friend and I desperately need something to keep our mind away from that unfortunate incident. We took the bus from the Chadianzi Bus Station towards Chengdu city center. We were wondering where we will be having dinner this time – which was a strange question because Chengdu is probably the last place you’d start to wonder where to eat.
The previous day, I remember passing by some old Chinese style buildings which looked nice and probably worth taking photos of. But I wasn’t sure where to get off. I didn’t even know what the place was called. Fortunately, the bus passed right by it and we promptly got off the bus. The buildings weren’t really old, but they were designed in the traditional Chinese building design. At the ground floor were rows of restaurants. It was basically a food street, just perfect for us.
As we walked down the street, we discovered that the restaurants were all high end ones. Nothing that would fit our budget. We continued walking down the road until we reached another main road. This is it, no more places to see. Fortunately, that road also has a couple of restaurants serving different kinds of Chinese food. Most of the restaurants where were Sichuan food, I won’t complain there. We chose the one with people eating, not really knowing what to eat there.
The food was pretty standard Sichuan fare. We ordered the Dry Fried French Beans 干遍四季豆. Something which I have already had before. One of their specialties here is something called 炖汤 or basically soup which they throw anything in. Since it was their specialty we had to try it, in this case we ordered pork. It came with pork bones and meat mixed with lotus seed. Unfortunately, this one wasn’t really that special. It was pretty bland but I guess that is how it was meant to be. With Sichuan dishes so flavorful, a bland soup would be used to clean the palate.
My favorite dish was the Fatty Beef with Sichuan Pepper 花椒肥牛. As the name implies, the dish is beef with lots of fats cooked in a lot of Sichuan pepper. This dish was surprisingly good. The beef was tender, and the fat give is a wonderful texture. The pepper give the dish that distinctive Sichuan numbing sensation. It is not overly spicy either. A bit salty, oily, but just perfect for me. I just wished that I could find that dish somewhere else. If anyone out there knows how to cook this wonderful dish, please let me know.
Since it was a main road outside, we figured that there should not be a problem getting a cab to get home. I didn’t know how to take the bus back to our hostel. How wrong were we. Again, it took us almost an hour to get a cab. It was really tough here. First it was Chongqing, now Chengdu. I was beginning to ask myself if it is really like this in China. Finally, our luck changed as we got our ride. I instructed our driver to go to our hostel and we were on our way.
The restaurant was not in any guidebook and we practically stumbled our way in to the restaurant. This just goes to show everybody of the quality of food here in Chengdu. You could probably eat in different places everyday for a year and still not have explored all these wonderful food places in Chengdu.
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