How much do you know about Sichuan cuisine？
2 min readIn Sichuan Province，some dishes are highly spiced and peppery，so it is often said that numbing，hot spices are the main characteristics of Sichuan cuisine.
Nonetheless，popular belief，Sichuan dishes have many other flavors.A popular saying says that，“China has food，and Sichuan has flavor .”The flavors of Sichuan cuisine can be rather complex.Chefs blend many spices together to create various flavors，including suanla wei（ hot and sour sauce），yuxiang wei（ tasty fish-flavored sauce），mala wei（ numbingly spicy sauce）and yanxun wei（ smoked flavor sauce）.
Sichuan cuisine carefully balances color，odor，flavor，shape and nutrition，so dishes not only look pleasant and appealing，but also are nutritious.There are several hundred indigenous dishes，besides some dishes that are intentionally toned down for tourists.So travelers at home and abroad have no difficulty in getting Sichuan food that suits their tastes at a banquet，dinner，lunch or as snacks.
Famous dishes include Spicy Chicken Fried with Peanuts，Fish-flavored Sliced Pork，Mapo Tofu and Twice-cooked Pork.
What is Hotpot？
Hotpot originated in Chongqing and it is noted for its peppery and hot taste.
Being a very popular way of restaurant eating，it can be found at every corner of Chongqing and Chengdu，where numerous sidewalk hotpot operations，as well as exquisite hotpot restaurants，have been set up to meet the increasing local demand.
Customers gather around a small boiling wok filled with nutritious soup base.Around the wok are placed numerous plates of paper-thin slices of raw meat and other ingredients.Customers select the raw ingredients and boil them in the soup.Theythen take them out of the wok and dip them in a small special-sauce-filled bowl sauce before eating them.
Restaurants offer various kinds of hotpot to suit customers’tastes so that friends or families with different tastes can huddle around and enjoy the feast.One of the most popular variety is yuanyang hotpot ，in which the wok is partitioned into two parts，with a thin wall.One part is filled with a hot，spicy soup base，and the other with a mild spicy broth.This kind of hotpot suits many customers both at home and abroad.
