What to Eat in Chongqing
11 fiery málà dishes to try

This is the dish the whole city revolves around — a pure beef-tallow base with dried chillies and Sichuan peppercorns floating across the surface until it glows red. The pot is divided into a nine-grid (九宫格), each cell running at a different heat for cooking different things. Classic dunks are ox tripe (毛肚), duck intestine (鸭肠), blood curd and luncheon meat. Dip everything in a sesame-oil and garlic bowl (油碟) to cut the burn. If you don't eat spicy, order a split yuanyang (鸳鸯) pot with half clear broth.

This is the city's breakfast — alkaline wheat noodles in a bowl built from more than twenty seasonings laid down before the noodles ever arrive: chilli oil, Sichuan peppercorn, preserved vegetable, garlic water, scallion. Then the hot noodles go on top. The favourite upgrade is wanza mian (豌杂面), topped with stewed peas and minced pork. Locals eat it perched on low plastic stools by the roadside every morning — the city even runs a "Top 50 xiaomian" ranking that people take seriously.

This one shocks you when it lands — bite-sized fried chicken buried under a whole plate of dried red chillies, so you genuinely have to fish the chicken out with your chopsticks. The chicken is twice-fried until crisp outside and juicy within, then tossed with dried chillies, Sichuan peppercorn, garlic and sesame, leaving a fragrant heat that lingers long after you swallow. The chillies aren't there to be eaten — they're there to perfume the chicken. It's one of the dishes Chongqing locals order most often to go with a cold beer.

A big bubbling pot of málà broth packed with duck blood, beef offal, intestine, tripe, luncheon meat and bean sprouts, finished with another layer of hot chilli oil poured over the top. The dish was born in Ciqikou old town in the 1940s, when a butcher's wife refused to waste leftover offal and boiled it up at a street stall — one day she dropped fresh blood straight into the boiling broth. The word "mao (毛)" in Chongqing dialect means rough and casual, which is exactly the spirit of it. The blood is silky like pudding, the offal has bite, and the broth is fiercely numbing. A jianghu legend.

Chongqing–Wanzhou-style grilled fish is different from a plain grilled fish: a whole fish is charred over charcoal until the skin crisps, then lowered into a tray of bubbling málà broth at your table with toppings like potato, tofu skin, enoki mushrooms, lotus root and wood-ear. You pick the fish, the spice level and the flavour (málà / pickled-chilli 泡椒 / black-bean 豆豉). It's a centrepiece the whole table shares. Wanzhou, a district of Chongqing, is known as China's "hometown of grilled fish," and the dish went nationwide from here.

Glass noodles made from sweet-potato starch — clear, springy and chewy — blanched and drowned in a hot-and-sour broth fragrant with vinegar and Sichuan peppercorn, then scattered with the two things that make it: fried peanuts and Sichuan pickles. The noodles soak up the broth so every mouthful is sour, spicy, fragrant and crunchy. It's a cheap street snack locals eat any time of day to fill a gap, and it's everywhere — stalls in Ciqikou old town and along Bayi Road snack street.

The name translates to "mouth-watering chicken" — poached chicken, sliced and served cold, under a red sauce of chilli oil, Sichuan peppercorn, soy, a touch of sugar, garlic and toasted sesame. Unlike laziji it isn't fried and isn't hot; it's all about that fragrant, numbing, faintly sweet sauce. The chicken stays tender and soaks up the dressing. It's a cool starter that opens a meal nicely before the truly fiery dishes arrive.

Chaoshou is the Sichuan–Chongqing word for wontons — thin wrappers around juicy minced pork, blanched in hot broth. The version Chongqing is proud of is hongyou chaoshou (红油抄手), wontons doused in fragrant red chilli oil with Sichuan peppercorn and garlic. The skins are slippery and soft, the filling sweet and juicy, and the chilli oil coats every one — spicy in a warming, not searing, way. It works as a light meal or a snack, and is often sold alongside xiaomian noodle shops.

Not one dish but a whole school — jianghu cai ("rivers-and-lakes food") is Chongqing's rustic cooking, born along the Yangtze: big plates, bold flavour, no fuss. Beyond laziji and maoxuewang, it runs to shuizhuyu (水煮鱼), tender fish in a sea of chilli oil; shaojigong (烧鸡公), a fragrant rooster stew in a big pot; quanshuiji (泉水鸡); and tai'an yu (太安鱼). They land in the middle of the table to share with bowls of hot rice — this is the truest spirit of how Chongqing eats.

After a whole meal of málà, your mouth needs cooling — and Chongqing has cold sweets for exactly that. Bingfen (冰粉) is a soft, wobbly clear jelly under brown-sugar syrup, scattered with peanuts, sesame, barley and fruit — wonderfully refreshing. Lianggao (凉糕) is a smooth chilled rice dessert for summer, also drizzled with brown sugar. And liangxia (凉虾) are little shrimp-shaped rice-flour drops floating in sweet, cold syrup. Everything costs a few yuan and turns up at stalls in the old town and along the snack streets.

Chongqing is nicknamed the "mountain city (山城)" because it's built across hills and cliffs above the rivers — and its classic dessert is little tangyuan, tiny glutinous rice balls filled with ground black sesame, sugar and a little lard, floating in a warm sweet broth. Bite in and the fragrant black-sesame filling flows out — sweet and rich in just the right measure, and the small size keeps them light. It's a traditional way to close a meal, still found at old dessert shops and in the old town, and the perfect thing to settle the chilli still buzzing on your tongue.