In Chengdu, Home-style Fare With a Woman's Touch

Mapo dofu might just be our favorite Sichuan dish. While in Chengdu in January we ate many, many bowls of the stuff, some for this article, which was published last week in the Wall Street Journal.

Our favorite was eaten not at one of the restaurant listed at the bottom of the article, but at a classic jiachang cai (home-style dishes) eatery in Chengdu's not unpleasantly yuppy-ish Yulin District where one extremely capable young woman rules the kitchen. 

It sits near the end of a narrow alley lined with poorly kept brick houses. Not your typical Yulin neighborhood, and I suspect that few of the district's fashionably dressed residents would ever think to dine here (or to walk down this alley, for that matter). But what this restaurant and its surrounds lack in style they more than make up for with their undeniable sense of place.

Here you know you're in Chengdu -- not in Shanghai or Beijing or Guangzhou, or even in Chongqing, but in Chengdu, Sichuan.

 

We may have gawped when we saw the woman in cook's white working the wok. Female cooks -- especially one as young as this one is -- at restaurants like this are a rare sight. In fact street food vendors aside, I don't believe we saw another woman cook our entire time in Sichuan.

We'd turned down this alley with full stomachs so we weren't in the market for a meal, but the confidence with which this young woman wielded her spatula, combined with the tantalizing aromas swirling about the patch of pavement in front of her stove and the gorgeous dishes she turned, one after the other, out of her wok convinced us to return.

Of course, when we arrived the next day for lunch everyone in the alley recognized us. After we'd ordered and Dave had wandered off with his camera a small crowd pushed in around me. A typically Chinese-style interrogation ensued:

Where are you from? 

How long have you been in Chengdu? How long will you stay?

What hotel are you staying in? How much does it cost for one night?

Where do you live? What do you do there? How much do you earn a year? 

Is he your husband? What's his job? How much does he earn a year?

How much does a plane ticket from America to China cost? How many hours on the plane?

Ni pa la ma? (Literally, 'Are you afraid of spicy-ness?')

How long have you been married?

How old are you? How many children do you have? Oh, that's a shame, you have no children yet.

And there was information unsolicited but given:

She's an excellent cook. The best cook around here.

She's 27. She's not married. Not even a boyfriend!

When our food began arriving an elderly lady standing at my elbow abruptly dispersed the crowd, and everyone wandered back to their lunches and cups of tea, their knitting, mahjong, dominoes, and soap operas.

In addition to the mapo dofu, which featured a fiery, funky fermented chili bean paste-heavy sauce, cubes of silky soft bean curd, and a thick dusting of ground Sichuan peppercorn, we ate a simple but brilliant dish that we'd watched the young cook prepare the day before: a tangle of thinly sliced, creamy textured eggplant, mild fresh green chili, and dried red chilies, all smoky from the wok.

We also ordered potatoes prepared typically Chinese-style -- sliced into matchsticks and fried just long enough to lose their starch but not their crunch. From the selection of fresh vegetables displayed in baskets by the stove we chose spinach, which was flash-fried with garlic and Sichuan peppercorns.

The meal was so delicious we returned another day for dinner: pleasingly vinegary yuxiang rousi, the cook's own version of lazi jiding (chicken with chilies), in which she substituted fresh green chilies, red pepper, and celery for the dish's usual mound of whole dried chilies,

and liangban kugua (bittermelon 'salad'), crisp-tender slices of blanched bitter melon dressed with nothing more than sesame oil and salt and crowned with slices of wok-softened red pepper. We're usually on the fence when it comes to bitter melon, but this dish boasted a lovely balance of saltiness, sweetness, and gentle bitterness.

 

After dinner the cook's father, curious to have a look at these waiguo ren who'd been making such a big deal of his daughter's food, came out to make our acquaintance. He opened the restaurant about a decade ago and handed over the spatula to his daughter a few years back. Now he helps with prep.

We complimented him on the food and he nodded, pleased. He agreed that his daughter is a talented cook. Then he puffed on his cigarette for a bit and shook his head.

"But she's not married yet. And she's already 27."

This restaurant sits on a lane that runs between Yulin 3rd Alley and Yulin 2nd Alley (Yulin San Xiang, Yulin Er Xiang), both of which run off of Yulin Dong Lu. Yulin District, Chengdu.

Comments

[Zita]

Great post! If I get the chance one day to go to Chengdu I would love to visit this place!!! :)

[Suzen]

This is too funny. I travel basically 2 weeks a month for work and we traveld in a group of 3 or 4. I traveld to China a lot and I was the only Chinese American girl my group. Everytime, I would get cornered with the exact questions you received.

Why do you travel so much? Aren't you worried about finding a husband? How old are you? You need to have children. How much money do you make? Do your parents allow you to travel so much?

I was only 25 at the time!

But ok. I also get interrogated the same way by my parents and any blood relative about marriage and breeding. Now that I am 31 the interrogation has really intensified.

[Jennifer]

What a sweet story. No wonder I'm procrastinating! Also, mmmmmmmmm!

[Jennifer Stanton Chapman]

The young cook looks very much in command, I'll have to see if I can find her when I return to Chengdu this October. I love the interrogation. I live in Shanghai and I have come to accept it as normal.

[Dan]

Wow, those dishes are very different from the brown, brown, and brown cereal I'm eating as I read this! But you have not commented on their spiciness. All those chilies look like they would seriously damage one's mouth. How hot was the food?

[Rich]

Such a brilliant piece.

When I lived in tokyo for a year, I once tried out a little dim sum place near my flat. It was empty and the food turned out to be awful but the lady owner sat uninvited at the table with me and proceeded to fire questions at me - with a real emphasis on how much I (and everyone i knew, back home and in tokyo) earned.

In the context of your piece, the questions makes sense to me, but more generally, can you explain what this is about - is it just interest in the wider world and what people do for a living? i found it really odd at the time, like i was being sized up - but looking back it's just a cultural misunderstanding, but i'd like to know more about why it seems to be a classic occurrence?

thanks again, for such a fascinating blog.

[kirbie]

The mapo tofu looks amazing as does everything else. I love how well the color of the bitter melon was captured!

[marc medina]

GRRRRRRRRRR.......

[sijeleng]

Wonderful post! I could see how one could become a regular there easily! I don't know which dish I want most; all of them look delicious.
The first few times one is interrogated in Asia (this used to happen to me regularly when I lived in Indonesia), the questions catch you off guard. In Indonesia I still answer "belum"(not yet) to not having children, and I am in my fifties.

[ntgerald]

What a wonderful post.

[Chris]

Absolutely great! Abt the questions..they haven't changed since I first went to China in the 80s. Now that I am married, they would ask if my husband 'allowed' me to travel so much!

[Maren]

I just about died when I saw the picture of the eggplant dish. My husband hated eggplant until we moved to China and now neither of us can get enough of it. I wish we would have found this place when we were in Chengdu last month.

We also get a lot of questions about why we're here, why my husband can speak Chinese, comments about how we're very young to be married, etc. We're used to it. Thank you for the wonderful blog! I always enjoy reading it.

[Julia]

Oh mine! Your post makes me so hungry!

[Oscar]

I think you like Chinese food, yes, I like it very much,becaues I am a Chinese, and I have a chinese food blog. www.chinesefoodfans.com

I want to exchange with you.

[Stephanie]

oh that interrogation...and the questions about income...is that modern china?

[Sarah]

wonderful, I love your blog
Any man would be happy to have her for a wife

[johnnyk]

I'll marry her!

[Brian Asis]

You had me craving for mapo dofu / tofu with the first picture. I thank you for the wonderful and informative post :D

[J2Kfm]

Very beautiful post. I am sure the young lady was smiling from ear to ear, eavesdropping at your conversation.

[Robyn]

Thanks everyone for your comments.

Regarding the interrogation, I had not much patience for it when I lived in Sichuan in the mid-eighties and Shanghai/Nanjing ten years later. But no longer being resident in China -- and being older, probably -- has enabled me to see it for what it is: pure curiosity expressed in a culturally specific way.
In China private space isn't a concept that's embraced by many. And that extends to private life, and privacy, as well. It's not seen as rude to ask someone questions that would be considered intrusive in the West.
Another thing is, when I'm in China my own behavior as regards this sort of thing changes quite quickly. No privacy is a wonderful thing if you're a writer who loves to talk to people about their lives. Most everything is laid open, and few questions shock. After an initial adjustment period -- 2 days, tops -- I am asking the same questions, or questions that a Westerner might see as intrusive.

Dan -- I'm not sure I'm a good one to gage spiciness. I'm pretty sure a year's residence in Chengdu way back one seriously skewed my palate. For me, not spicy at all; mildly tingling. For someone who doesn't eat chilies, hot chilies, at least 5 times a week, probably a little challenging.
Then again I found most cooks in Chengdu toned down the heat unless I remembered to ask them to make it "Chengdu person spicy" not "foreigner spicy".

Hi Rich -- thank you for the compliments, and I hope I answered your questions in my preamble.

Sijeleng -- LOL - that's funny! I answer 'no' to the children question and then when the questioner says 'not yet' I reply yes, not yet, while directing their attention to the color of my hair. (Pretty gray -- prematurely, I like to think.)

Stephanie -- That's modern China, China in the mid-eighties when I was first there, and I'd wager, China going decades back! It's just very China, period.

Sarah -- I should think so. She's quite pretty too, especially when she smiles.

johnnyk -- I love your comment! Thank you.

Brian Asis -- credit for that to the photographer, Dave.

J2Kfm -- She couldn't have been. She was moving too fast at the stove!

[eastingfeasting]

that eggplant dish is simple in looks & make but wow in taste. seeing these simple dishes makes me want to copy it right away out of the kitchen. Another great read. Robyn does a great job explaining chinese food as simple and wholesome.

[wandernut]

I love this story.

I really must visit Chengdu soon. After 2 years in Shanghai, I'm about to leave to return to KL for good.

Because I'm 32, and about to get married :)

[Shirley]

The eggplant looks so good, and your interrogation had me chuckling. I'm still not used to being asked how much I make, and I'm 29 and *gasp* unmarried!

[bo]

What a sweet story.thanks