After Kunming, we headed off to Chengdu via an 18 hour train ride. Surprisingly enough, the train was quite pleasant. When we got to Chengdu, we were starving so we set off in search of food.
No trip to Sichuan province is complete without at least one hot pot experience.
Hot pot is kind of like it sounds. There's a big pot in the middle of the table filled with boiling broth infused with spices. A lot of very spicy spices. At least in Sichuan. I've had hot pot before, but never this spicy. And if I think something is spicy, it's actually spicy - none of that fake out crap at restaurants where they warn you it's spicy, and you get all excited, and then it turns out they consider a few shakes of black pepper spicy. So basically, what you do is order a bunch of raw food, toss it in the pot, wait for it to cook, the fish it out of the pot and eat it. I think it's kind of fun because it's an activity and a meal all at the same time.
A group of people from our hostel decided to go to Fat Mama's Hot Pot, a recommended restaurant nearby.
When we got there, there was no English or picture menu… So Mallory and I headed off into the kitchen to order for our table of 8. They literally let us go through their refrigerators to point to the items we wanted… The poor guys that were preparing the food were looking at us like we were insane. Two blonde laowai poking around a random kitchen in China.
I picked out some lotus root, which I love, and I managed to get all the others addicted to it. Towards the end of the meal, it was an all out battle to see who could find the last bits of lotus root in the pot.
It was delicious. If you ever get the chance, eat Sichuan Hot Pot.
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