East Kitchen

Talking about Szechuan Food, Szechuan Hot Pot is an absolute ‘can’t-miss’. Just as the name suggests, Hot Pot involves a pot on a heating source throughout the entire dining process, like Fondue. But instead of cheese and bread, Szechuan Hot Pot uses spicy chili broth in bright red color and a variety of raw food ingredients such as thinly sliced beef and mutton, seafoods, tofu and vegetables. These ingredients are added into the red hot broth for boiling, before getting picked out, dipped into some sesame paste and eaten. Soaking in the chili broth and dipping sauce, the food ingredients taste spicy, creamy and full of flavors. Apart from creating great taste, this unique ‘self-serving’ ritual integrates cooking as part of eating, making Hot Pot a fun and sociable dining experience. To accommodate different palates, more options have been invented for the pot and the broth, such as ‘Yin-Yang Pot’ which is one pot divided into 2 parts with red (spicy) and white (non-spicy) broth at each side. Hot Pot is beyond doubt the most popular food across China, demonstrated by a total of over 580,000 Hotpot restaurants in China in 2020, which is six times the number of burger joints in the US (91,990). Would you like to try Hot Pot? Let us know in the comment section!

Do you know that traditional greeting between Chinese people is ‘have you eaten’? Equivalent to ‘hello’ and ‘how are you’, the expression is a demonstration of the role food plays in people’s life. No nation loves and invests more into food than the Chinese. This is a people who, throughout the history has seen food not only as a necessity in life, but a source of happiness, a way to health and longevity, a form of art, and the foundation of society. Good taste is simply not enought. Chinese cuisine highlights ‘color’, ‘form’, ’aroma’, ‘flavor’ and ‘asthaetics’ as the 5 key components making up the holistic experience of a dish.