Pork Intestine Rice Noodles - Bai Jia Fei Chang Fen

Pork intestine (fei chang) is the starting point of some of the most loved local dishes in Sichuan. It is stewed, stir fried, stirred into hot pot, adds richness to dishes like bean soup, and gets the dry pot treatment, among others. I once watched a couple of guys buying a huge length of it in the supermarket with the obvious anticipation that one of my compatriots might show picking out a top grade steak. I get why it is so popular - there is a chewy outside and a tender inside to the organ that gives it both absorbency and 'kou gan' (mouthfeel), but I only order it at reputable places since it has to be cleaned and prepared carefully or the barnyard notes get a little too much for my taste.

A popular way to eat fei chang is in soup with rice noodles - fei chang fen. Many of the shops selling fei chang fen in Chengdu advertise Bai Jia style. We went to Bai Jia Village in Shuangliu to try the original. Besides noodles, we sampled a few of their other dishes prepared with pork intestine.

By the door, as is typical with fei chang fen shops, was a guo kui station. Guo kui is the traditional accompaniment to fei chang fen. My host said that during the holiday, there was a half hour lineup for this guo kui.

The guo kui was nicely browned but not too oily, and tender and flaky. There was not a lot of meat filling but we didn't miss it. It did complement the bowl of rice noodles well. We ordered the rice noodles without hot sauce, but many people like to get them spicy.

The first dish to land on the table was cold mixed fei chang (凉拌肥肠). Spicy, salty, delicious.

We then dipped into a bowl of 'stewed knotted intestine soup' (冒结子汤). My table companions were impressed with its fragrance.

Fragrant crispy intestine (香酥 肥肠 ) that had been sliced into rings and deep fried, one of my favourite dishes of the day:

Dry pot style (干涡 肥肠 ), one of the dishes that really impressed me with the kitchen's cooking skill. Besides the fei chang, vegetables, and hot pepper there were other flavourful touches like reconstituted dried mushrooms and ginger. All of the components really worked well together.

Mouthwatering intestine (口水 肥肠 ) lived up to its name. It was spicy but well balanced.

Last but not least, intestine steamed in rice meal (粉蒸 肥肠 ), which melted in the mouth.

Storefront:

Name: Bai Jia Gao Ji Fei Chang Fen, Original Shop

Name and Address in Chinese: 白家高记 肥肠 粉总店, 成都 双流白家镇新街 136 号

Wenshu Temple over the holiday

Wenshu Temple is a hotbed of activity during the Spring Festival and had lots of extra booths set out, as usual.

Yak jerky, and various other dried creatures:

There were piles of crunchy sweets made from grains and nuts:

The lineup at Gong Ting Tao Su was even longer than usual.



Zhang's Liang Fen was standing room only, even on the outside.

It was far easier to grab a chair across the alley at Long Chao Shou, where the servers showed great annoyance that neither I nor the three customers ahead of me had change. I hadn't eaten at Long Chao Shou in years, due to repeatedly being disappointed by their signature product, but it remains a tourist favourite so I decided to drop in.

My san he ni, which was tasty but gummy - too much sticky rice in relation to the other ingredients.

I also got an order of chao shou in mushroom broth. The chao shou had good filling and were nicely cooked, tasting much better than I remember. Though I was impressed with the dumplings, the mushroom soup tasted like it was from a mix.

Fresh blended Soy Milk

I've been noticing more and more of this 'fresh blended soy milk' being sold as a snack. Cooked soybeans are blended whole with hot water and additions. The menu lists the health benefits of each type of soy milk - you can add red, black, and green beans, peanuts, oatmeal, mountain yam, lotus seeds, dates, goji berries, sesame seeds, and corn, in various combinations. Sugar is usually added, but I tell the vendor not to bother.

Big blender and additions:



Closer look at the additions:



Menu with formulas and health benefits:




Location: Yulin Dong Lu 玉林东路

Chicken Soup Shop

It's been a while since I visited this place. It is as good as ever, with its set menu of chicken soup and side dishes. I sat upstairs this time. I did notice that quite a few of the other diners were eating spicy cold seasoned chicken (凉拌鸡) rather than chicken soup.



The side dishes are now chargeable, so it is not as inexpensive to eat here as it once was.

Chicken soup, cabbage and tofu, pumpkin rice:

Back to Shang Palace for Dim Sum

The dim sum scene in Chengdu has changed tons since my last visit to Shang Palace in the Shangri-La hotel, and I had been meaning to get back for a while. When I heard that the Hong Kong Shang Palace had gotten another Michelin star I decided to move Shang Palace up my list.

The menu had changed since we last visited. We tried the steamed beef tripe, which was tasty, but I found it chewy and a little tough to eat. I think it's for tripe lovers only.

These shrimp dumplings had unfortunately sat in the steamer a bit too long. The wrappers were too soft and the bamboo shoot inside had lost its crunch.

This radish cake had fantastic flavour, but was already a little cool by the time it landed on our table.

This was a new dish, peach and shrimp spring rolls.  Light and lovely.

We got some dried scallop and gingko congee, It was very good, though I thought it could have had more scallop flavour.

We had a lull of several minutes between getting some of our dishes. There appears to be a distance between the kitchen and the dining room that introduces some lag into the process. I usually have a lot of patience when dishes take their time coming out of the kitchen. However, waiting a long time for the order does raise one's expectations that freshly and carefully prepared plates will eventually arrive. These expectations are not really met at Shang Palace.

Barbecue pork chang fen, tasty but without the supple smoothness that we associate with really good rice roll:

It's decent dim sum for the price (68 yuan each, plus service charge).

Homestyle in Hongpailou - Jia Wei Can Guan

A friend invited me to eat at one of these small neighbourhood restaurants that always seem to do local food the best. I didn't do the ordering, so the first thing that landed on the table was this dish of pig ears (猪耳朵). I thought they were fantastic, but my table companions judged them a bit too sweet:

One useful way of gauging a kitchen is by the freshness of their greens, and the care with which they are prepared and presented. The restaurant did a very nice job with this plate of you cai:



I didn't catch the name of this fish dish, but it was done well - good, tender fish in spicy broth.

'Eat-by-hand' ribs (手撕排骨) is a dish that we are seeing on more and more menus lately. It's delicious, and spicy, and usually mixed with potatoes, dry pot style.

We also wanted to order twice cooked potatoes - 回锅土豆.

Name in Chinese: 佳味餐馆
Address: 红牌楼北街 23 号 附 1 号

I have a picture menu label on this post, but only the main dishes were illustrated. 

Clay Pot Dishes for a Chilly Day

Chengdu is feeling quite wintery this week. If you are chilled and looking for something to warm you up, look for 'sha guo' dishes cooked in these heavy pots over a flame.  There are all kinds of choices for what gets cooked inside. Absorbent stuff like intestines, meatballs, spam, tofu, or crispy fried pork pieces are popular. Veg options are available as well and some places will let you combine two veg in one pot, if you ask. The pots hold enough heat to keep your food warm even if you are eating outside.

Here is a sha guo restaurant at the mouth of the snack street on Guang Hua Village, which is rather famous. We thought the food was below average, unfortunately. We didn't like the tough, fatty pieces of meat. 




This is a very good, and spicy, beef sha guo with the rice mixed in (牛肉砂锅饭), at the snack street by a vocational school outside the east third ring. The rice variation is not one we see often.

Locations in Chinese - 光华村小吃街 for the first picture, 四川长江职业学院 后街 for the second one (so out of the way, many taxis from Chengdu won't even go there unless you negotiate a special rate)

Jinjiang District Police Cafeteria

Office and government cafeterias that are open to the public are sought-after places for sustenance. Although they may have limited hours these places are fast, inexpensive, and many feel the food safety standards are higher than on the street. Recently some very cool friends brought me to the Jinjiang district police canteen for lunch.

The inside is strictly cafeteria style, but it was clean.

Most of the police officers were getting food trays to fill up from the dishes on offer that day, but we chose to order off of the menu. Cops have priority:

I asked the server about the beef shreds (牛肉丝) on the menu and she said we could get them done with celery or green peppers (our choice).

 

This was a pretty unique tasting bear paw tofu (熊掌豆腐). It tasted a little sweet, similar to yuxiang. However, it was fried to a nice crispiness under the sauce and we loved it.

By the time twelve thirty rolled around, most of the staff were cleaning up.

Strange Flavour

There is a quasi-chain of noodle shops in Chengdu called Niu Wang Miao noodles. By that I mean there are several noodle shops with the same name but their menus, prices, and products are very different though many of them have the same sign and it's hard to tell which branches are actually related and which are not. If there were ever an original noodle shop around the Niu Wang Miao area (southeast of downtown) it's a mystery to me.

This bowl of strange flavour noodles is from the branch one on Xing Rong street.

These were too watery for my taste. I like a good slick of the red oil on top.

Address in Chinese: 兴容街 #63

The House of Red Oil

This mao cai restaurant was named appropriately - Hong You Fang, or red oil house.

The baskets of ingredients simmered away in the spicy soup:

My vegetable version was pretty spicy. I got a bottle of peanut milk (豆奶) on ths side to tame the heat.

Storefront:

Address: 二环路东三段三号新居, on a small street north of the second ring across from Cheng Hua Ito Yokado

Two Ginkgoes

Among the last things I ate on a recent trip back to the home country were sashimi and a cocktail at Guu. Guu is a very popular Vancouver based family of Japanese izakaya - the kind of restaurant that does small plates to go with drinks.

When I got back to Chengdu and glanced at the business card I'd picked up from Guu, I was fairly stunned to see that Guu has a China location within walking distance from my home in Chengdu, of all places.

I noticed on the card that Guu shares an address and an expensive phone number (nearly all 8s) with Ginkgo Jingge. Ginkgo is a family of restaurants in Chengdu with each branch having its own specialty.  Ginkgo Jingge, near the Rainbow bridge, is best known for dim sum. On arriving, I couldn't find any sign of Guu though the staff assured me I was at the right place and handed me a dim sum menu. A server eventually led me to another section of the restaurant, with very few people, and came up with a menu card which featured some dishes from Guu. When I asked for drinks they only offered me fruit juice.

There were no staff behind the bar and the atmosphere was extremely quiet. The server eventually found an English speaking staff member who explained they do have some dishes from Guu, and the Japanese chef from there visits every few months. However, they do not offer cocktails at the Guu in Ginkgo. Also, the energetic staff greetings and informal buzz of a place like Guu in Vancouver is nothing like the atmosphere in a large, stately, restaurant like Ginkgo. Once we got over expecting a local Guu, we tried a few of the dishes.

Salmon sushi, OK.



This seared fish salad was beautiful, but the dressing was really lacking something.



This beef salad was the only real hit among the dishes we ordered. We both loved the dressing.



This boneless stuffed and grilled chicken wing was tasty and we liked that they provided some vegetation on the side, but the dish came off feeling a bit overdone to us. I mean, it's a chicken wing and I was supposed to be in a bar. 



Since this branch of Ginkgo is best known for its dim sum, which would cost about half the amount we paid per person, we'll ask for the dim sum menu on our next visit.

A couple of weeks later we got to try the dim sum at Ginkgo Chuntian, the newest member of the Ginkgo family at the Guanghua Village branch of Renhe Chuntian department store.

The first thing to land on the table were small bowls of pickles and spicy shredded chicken. They were fantastic, but the chicken was far too assertive of an introduction to delicate Cantonese food. 

Their durian pastry was super simple: fresh durian scooped into a pastry shell. Very nice.

Fish slice congee. Congee is a must order if we go for dim sum and theirs is great.

Shrimp dumplings, nicely steamed and with firm shrimp filling. Liked a lot.

Turnip cake, a little soft to my taste, but a decent rendition.

Firm-skinned dumplings filled with gingery, piping hot soup:

We didn't get to try a lot of the dishes we wanted to, but will be back.

Ginkgo Jingge is absolutely beautiful inside and is a restaurant to impress with.  Their servers are very polished but lack the warm, enthusiastic hospitality that characterizes very good Sichuan style service. Ginkgo Chuntian has the buzz you would expect from a new restaurant, and the servers were obviously not as experienced, but had the local 'reqing' and we felt better taken care of.  They were also enforcing the no smoking policy, while at Jingge customers were puffing away freely. We would go back to Chuntian first.

Ginkgo Jingge:
青羊区锦里中路2号

Ginkgo Chuntian:  
青羊区二环路西二段19号仁和春天A座