Admitting Defeat in the Face of Chongqing Hot Pot

As I mentioned, Chongqing is a city well known for spicy food, and king among those is Chongqing Hot Pot. Hot pot is a dish popular throughout China - Asia really! - and the essential nature of it is that you have your meats, veggies, tofu, noodles,etc. all cut up and ready to go around a steaming pot of broth. It’s a truly communal meal as you are cooking as you eat, putting in the ingredients that you want to eat and then fishing them out when ready.

It is not necessarily a spicy dish, but throughout most of the country the most famous versions are Sichuan style hot pot, which definitely has some heat. The style from Chengdu is probably the most well-known, but Chongqing takes it to the next level with heat that will make even seasoned spice hounds beg for mercy.

My wife and I definitely consider ourselves to be spicy food lovers, and hot pot is one of our favorite meals to prepare when we entertain guests. Naturally, this is part of the reason that we went to Chongqing, and their local hot pot (of which there are over 50,000 restaurants!) was an absolute must. By most standards, ‘medium’ heat is considered to be insanely spicy and not recommended for the uninitiated, but as a couple that will add handfuls of habaneros to our food without batting an eye we thought it couldn’t be that bad.

Upon a recommendation from a worker at a local craft beer bar (notice a theme?) we took a taxi to a very local establishment, essentially located on a backroad in the middle of the city that few travelers would naturally stumble upon. Without hesitation we ordered medium spice, and then slowly wondered if we had made some kind of terrible mistake as the servers loaded more and more chilis and sichuan peppercorns into the pot and brought it to a simmer.

That mistake was confirmed after only a few bites. While the chili peppers bring a searing heat, the sichuan peppercorns added another layer creating both an extreme numbing and almost electrical sensation. This is known in China as mala, literally numbing spice. While some degree is common with a lot of Chinese dishes, these took it to the stratosphere, making your lips feel like they had electrical probes hooked up to them.

Was it delicious? Absolutely. But, it was kind of like eating tasty lava. The spice was so intense and only growing, and the writing was on the wall pretty quickly that we would get nowhere near finishing our meal. Much earlier than we anticipated we called the server back over to pack up our spicy remnants in a doggy bag, feeling like we lost a lot of face and absolutely proving that we were no match for the local palettes. Be warned, Chongqing hot pot is no joke. Next time we’ll go with the light spice…