China's Hottest Cuisine

CHENGDU Chef Zhou Shizhong's chopping knife is poised for the kill.

"You have to be quick," he tells his class, a soft-shelled turtle squirming under his palm. "Or else it'll keep hiding."

A tiny head appears. An expert slash to the neck. A squirt of blood. Students squeal and snap photos with their mobile phones as Chef Zhou whisks the twitching turtle into a wok of boiling water.

"Poor thing," a student says. "So cruel," laments another, covering her mouth and giggling.

I'm attending class at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine on the outskirts of the provincial capital, where about 50 students, dressed in paper hats and forest-green aprons, are watching a master at work. Standing beside a tray of ingredients including bean sauce, cooking wine and MSG, Chef Zhou, a 21-year veteran of the kitchen, guides students through the steps of preparing Sichuan classics: spicy chicken, pork with rice chips and braised turtle with potatoes which, it turns out, is quite tasty.

These squeamish students, and the 8,200 others who are enrolled in the college including about 15 foreigners are training for careers as chefs and restaurant and hotel managers. Expressed more grandly, they're being groomed to serve as ambassadors for what's often considered China's best cuisine.

Last March, Sichuan's capital was designated a Unesco City of Gastronomy, Asia's first. Forget Paris or Tokyo the world's only three official gastronomic cities are Popayan, Colombia, stersund, Sweden, and Chengdu, best known for its nearby panda center. The designation is part of Unesco's Creative Cities Network, which seeks to promote social, economic and cultural development in urban centers around the world.

To be declared a gastonomic city requires meeting rigorous criteria a well-developed cuisine that uses local ingredients, a vibrant community of chefs and traditional restaurants, a tradition of culinary practices and cooking methods that have withstood technological advancements and more.

The Institute played a big part in achieving Chengdu's designation, with its professors helping to write the application. Now, it's sending students abroad, part of a larger effort to promote Sichuan cuisine to the world.

American photographer James Wasserman and I recently set out to find out what, exactly, makes Sichuan food so special. We discovered a city where eating is always an adventure, where you rarely go wrong by closing your eyes and pressing your finger on a menu, and where food is a source of cultural pride.

Sichuan food is renowned for its intense, spicy flavors, owed to the liberal use of chili peppers, numbing Sichuan peppercorn, bean paste and garlic. Westerners are familiar with versions of some classic Sichuan (also spelled Szechuan) fare think kung pao chicken. But the cuisine features some 5,000 dishes, the vast majority seldom tasted beyond China's borders.

The province is hoping to change that by increasing Sichuan food's appeal abroad and by promoting Chengdu as a tourist destination not just for pandas, but for steaming plates of braised turtle as well.

Chengdu's Vice Mayor, Wang Zhonglin, has said he is "vigorously devoted to a food-culture industry," and the city recently hosted its seventh China International Food Tourism Festival, promoting Sichuan cuisine to delegations from 22 countries.

Sichuan even boasts its own food museum. Built in 2007, the Chengdu Sichuan Cuisine Museum cost 100 million yuan (US$15 million), covers 12,000 square meters and features more than 3,000 bronze, pottery, porcelain and wood cookers dating back 2,000 years.

Our first night in town we check out Xiaotan Douhua, a little place not far from our hotel. Opened in 1924, this hole-in-the-wall popular with locals offers 33 combinations of noodles and soft tofu, the choices written on wooden tablets hanging on the wall. I ask the chain-smoking chef, Li Xi Chao, to recommend some dishes. "I like them all!" he replies.

We take the advice of the old lady at the counter and order bowls of san zi dou hua, a tangy mixture of tofu, strips of fried dough and soy beans in a spicy-sour broth; dou hua cao zi mian, thin noodles with tofu and chopped onion; and a plate of buttery-tasting chopped beef with coriander and garlic. The dishes blend perfectly, not overpowering but with enough bite to make our foreheads' sweat. The san zi dou hua, in particular, is a triumph.

For a light lunch the next day we stop at Wen Shu Yuan temple's vegetarian restaurant, where we eat a refreshing meal of cold tofu in soy sauce and oil, and fresh greens with walnuts--a nice palate-cleanser after last night's spice.

One of the requirements of the Unesco designation is a wet market, and Chengdu has several. We venture to a major market in the Qing Yang district, where we snack on sweet-potato noodles and fresh spring rolls before browsing the market's many offerings. Shoppers wander among buckets of frogs (illegal, my interpreter says), fish and eels and tables of skinned rabbits and dozens of bean pastes.

Stalls offer pickled peppers, ginger, radishes, tofu and stacks of fresh vegetables. There are numerous brands of MSG on offer, including Wang Sho Yi Chicken Essence Seasoning, whose label features a smiling cartoon chicken giving a thumbs-up. And then there are the likes of pig brain, duck gizzard and cow stomach and throat all popular additions to fiery Sichuan hot pot.

Based on several recommendations, we visit Jin Li Street, famous for its xiao chi ("small eats"). This turns out to be a disappointment. We try bean thread noodles with shredded cucumber and carrots in a spicy-sweet sauce; "fish fragrant" pork slices with steamed lettuce and cloud ear shreds; and a mysterious dish of sour vegetables and meat pieces. We finish it off with a dessert-like item named "three big bombs"--balls of glutinous rice flour the chef bounces off a table fitted with bells.

It's hit-and-miss--I get the feeling this street is just a bit too touristy for great dining. James takes particular offense at the mix of spicy and sweet in the combined dishes. "My tongue's going crazy right now," he says.

The next night we dine with Taylor Gregson, a 27-year-old from Vermont who spent last summer studying Sichuan cooking at a local college. We meet at Wen Xiang Old Courtyard, where Mr. Gregson tells me about his course over a dinner of shredded pork, stir fried vegetables, spicy boiled fish and dry pot mushrooms with tea leaves.

Mr. Gregson, the only foreigner in his class, "was thrown in from day one," learning three new dishes a day and, for homework, perfecting knife skills and flipping dirt in a pan. The highlight? "When I finally cooked something that tasted good."

Mr. Gregson is one of a short but growing line of foreigners seeking out Sichuan's secrets. British author Fuchsia Dunlop, author of "Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China," was the first foreigner to attend the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine and has helped introduce the province's fare to an international audience.

Ms. Dunlop says it's a misconception to label Sichuan food as simply spicy. In fact, the cuisine offers a "bouquet of flavors," she says, with gradations of spice combined with other tastes, such as sweet and sour (curiously called "lychee flavor") and ginger juice. "They like to say '100 dishes has 100 different flavors.' You never get bored."

As China continues to open, Ms. Dunlop says, more people are realizing just how good Sichuan food is. "In China in general people tend to be very obsessed with food, but in Sichuan there is a sense they have something marvelous here," she says. "It's really a moment for Chinese regional cuisines to come out to the world."

While the world takes notice of Sichuan, the province is also learning from the outside world. (This isn't new: Chili peppers were introduced by the Spanish, via Latin America, some 400 years ago.) In Chengdu, several restaurants--including Gingko, Zi Fi and Yunmen Emerald Restaurant--are combining Sichuan classics with modern and molecular cooking.

Meanwhile, the Sichuan Institute sends about 150 students a year to work in the U.S., Europe, Singapore, the Middle East and elsewhere, part of what Chef Zhou tells me is a mutually beneficial cultural exchange. The students pay 30,000 yuan ($4,550) for the opportunity (which the college says they'll make back in six months) and work in both Chinese and Western restaurants. Many of the students go on to open Sichuan restaurants abroad, while others bring back techniques and ingredients that are introduced into local dishes.

Fan Dong Yun, a 20-year-old culinary arts student, is in a special class that prepares students to go abroad. Next June, he will have his first internship on a cruise ship, he hopes. He says he's excited to meet cooks from other parts of the world and to exchange recipes.

Mr. Fan tells me he's fond of all types of food, but when I ask his favorite, he scoffs: "Sichuan food, of course."