Food in Chengdu

It's just been a while I don't post anything in this blog, although it's been almost 3 months I've been in Chengdu, Sichuan province, China for my exchange program. How time can fly so fast, that in less than a month I'll be returning to Indonesia, my home-country for my internship. Well then in this occasion, I'd like to share my experience about food in Chengdu. I live about ten-fifteen minutes from the campus of Sichuan Normal University. Near to the south gate of the campus, there are bunch of shops and restaurants, mostly Chinese and Sichuanese specialty for restaurants. Being a student here in China is really different than being a student in France, including this subject, food. When I was in France, it's really rare that people go eating in restaurants(except if they're bloody rich or simply a "bobo"), because it's very expensive. A two courses meal can cost you at least 28 euros (about 224 RMB). When I was in France, it was occasional that I go to restaurant, even thought I was working part time, but I preferred to cook my meal because it was far more cheaper. So when I did was like cooking almost everyday, having lunch at university canteen twice or thrice a week when I didn't have time to go home cooking due the afternoon classes, sometimes(rarely) buying for take away dish from a Chinese/Japanese restaurants and once a month or two going to restaurant with either my boyfriend or friends.

In Chengdu, people going to eat in restaurants is a very usual thing. For the general family style restaurants, every dish has a portion for two-three persons with a price starts from 12-50 RMB each. There are though some restaurants of noodles or fried rice for one person portion with a cheaper price like 7-12 RMB each. Around the south gate of my campus, I can find about two Korean restaurants. My Korean friends from campus always say that the foods aren't as delicious as the ones in Korea, but for me who has never been in Korea before, I can't even tell. And the foods in Korean style restaurants are quite delicious. They have of course Bibimbap, Kimchi as and Gimbap(which I always buy for lunch), with price between 8-15 RMB. In this area(just beside the south gate), we can find also this Taiwanese fried chicken small restaurant, just in front of the Korean restaurant. They're selling spicy fried chicken with bones or the ones without, spicy chicken meatball, and my favorite one, fried calamari with wasabi powder seasoning. The price range is between 8-12 RMB. The Chinese dumplings are also worth a try. There's a small restaurant of dumplings (Jiaozi) inside the campus area. For about 20 dumplings, you pay 7 RMB. Not expensive at all.

Sichuan province is very famous of their spicy foods. You really want to know how to say 'hot/spicy' or 'pepper'. The adjective for 'spicy' is 'la'(in Pinyin), usually in restaurants they will ask you 'lajiao' or not, then you can answer as you prefer : 'lajiao' means also 'spicy', if you don't want spicy, then you can say 'bu la' or 'bu lajiao'. The pepper in Sichuan called 'huajiao'. The very infamous Sichuanese dish is the Huoguo or the hotpot. It is a big recipient with a boiled sauce(spicy and not-spicy) of vegetables and meat. Generally if you see a restaurant with a big circle form hole in the middle, then it's a hotpot restaurant. The hotpot restaurants relatively are a bit more expensive because it is for more two person each table. Mostly the hotpot restaurant let the clients choose the vegetable or meat they want to put in a boiled sauce, and these vegetables and meats are presented in skewer form. If you want to eat hotpot but you're alone, you can try 'maocai', it's a hotpot for a one person portion. If you want beef with this 'maocai' you can ask for 'maocai niurou', with 'niu rou' means beef. The price is about 14-16 RMB already with rice. For a tea-coffee-sofdrink-juice drinker, Chengdu or China is a great place for it, because you can find almost everywhere a coffee-tea shop that serves also juice and other kind of beverages to take away. There's this coffee-tea shop called 'Coffee and Tea' just when you enter this area of restaurants, they have this strawberry ice milk tea (caomei naicha) which is super delicious, ask for 'bing de' which means 'cold' and for 6 RMB only, not even 1 euro(which is about 8 RMB). For coffee lovers like my boyfriend is, they have Macchiato (machito), ask for 're de' which means 'hot', and it's 10 RMB. They have also like a card that for every drink we buy, they'll put a point and for the 10th drink, you'll get one drink for free.

For sushi lover, they have some stalls that sell sort of sushi and maki, but they don't serve with soja sauce, but with mayonnaise instead, and be careful with the little sachet of wasabi you get from their stalls, it's pretty strong. In the town, you can find some interesting places to eat too, like the Korean BBQ restaurant for 60 RMB, you get the meat and some vegetables and you can do the BBQ yourselves, try if you have time. It's worth a visit.

There are not much of western restaurants though, well if there are ones, it's quite expensive, you can pay about 100 RMB for certain meal like burgers or steak. Restaurants like The Spot, Grandma's Kitchen, Bookworm, Peter's Tex-Mex are really known in town if you wanna eat from time to time western foods. Mcdonald and Pizza Hut take also delivery order in Chengdu, you just have to check their phone number and try to order when you get hungry late at night. Mcdonald has the English speaking service while Pizza Hut doesn't.

Maybe this is what I can write for a moment about Food in Chengdu. I'll update some more if I got other things to tell. Have a good day and see you next time, folks!

BsxxxARS