Fiery Food Feasts

Victor leads private clients, whether small or large groups, on foodie adventures in Sichuan province in southwest China. Sichuan’s cuisine is the most creative regional cuisine within China, and it ranks among the top crop of the world’s best cuisines. An impressive variety of ingredients go into the cooking, a variety that is reflected in the moist clime of the mountains of Sichuan – the mountains with their stratified habitats hold the largest concentration of temperate species on earth. Victor’s knowledge of Sichuan food and the restaurant scene arises from many years of research for writing, and knowledge gained as an insider – Victor is married in Sichuan. He has eaten out extensively in Chengdu, capital in Sichuan, where he is a connoisseur of fine restaurants; and elsewhere in Sichuan province, which is a large as Spain, Victor travelled widely in pursuit of specialty foods and ingredients.    

Such experiences makes Victor uniquely able to take private clients on eclectic foodie experiences in Sichuan, whether eating in the fine restaurants of Chengdu or travelling further afield and lodging with farmers to eat rural and hearty slow-cooked food. Programmes are customisable for each group of guests; themed itineraries or packages include the four options outlined below.   

 Chengdu Connoisseur Restaurants

After many years of eating out in Chengdu’s finest restaurants – as well as writing extensively about the city’s restaurant scene – Victor knows the best restaurants in Chengdu. Clients can engage Victor to take them to the finest restaurants, an experience that can be spread out over several days. Examples of some memorable restaurants include a vegetarian restaurant tucked in a Buddhist temple, a restaurant that specializes in tofu dishes (with the tofu freshly made inhouse using a traditional manual tofu press), a restaurant that specializes in exquisite and rare wild mushrooms, a variety of hotpot restaurants (best of which do the traditional spicy broth or broth made from duck or black chicken), a restaurant that cooks up no-nonsense pungent Sichuan dishes, and restaurants that concoct creative fusion dishes from Sichuan and Cantonese cuisines.     

 Practical Cookery Courses

Victor collaborates with two creative and modern restaurants where private clients can learn Sichuan cooking from the chefs. Clients can choose to undertake a cookery course at their preferred level of depth and duration (courses can take one day or more), or simply opt for a food demonstration experience, in which clients watch the chef cook a complete meal that the clients then feast upon. Either way, the idea is to present the a complete meal in the Sichuan tradition – starting with cold dishes or appetisers, then a spate of hot dishes, finally a soup and steamed rice accompanied with pungent delicacies. 

 Visits to Specialty Restaurants  

Victor can take private clients to restaurants or family-style outfits that specialize in particular foodstuffs, where clients can learn to cook up – or simply watch the creation of – specialty dishes or foodstuffs. Some of these foodstuffs are delicacies – here are some examples below:   

• Noodle house. Here the cook makes fresh noodles by hand (which is a great photo opportunity), and cooks up cauldrons of various sauces that are ladled over the fresh boiled noodles.   
• Dumpling eatery. Of the two types of dumplings in China, it’s the one that is boiled in water like ravioli that is popular in Sichuan. Victor can take clients to a restaurant that specialises in making these dumplings, where clients can see how the dough and different fillings are made.      
• Shifang duck. The town of Shifang has bequeathed Sichuan with the excellent ‘Shifang duck.’ The duck is marinated in rice whiskey, then smoked and dried; and later, in preparation for eating, it is boiled in herbs and water and served warm or cold. Victor can take clients to a household that specializes in the making Shifang duck that is then sold from specialty stalls – it has been a family business for generations – and clients can see the preparation and the cooking of Shifang duck, and then feast on some.    
• Rugged country dishes. Rural restaurants specialise in hearty rustic dishes served in authentic farmhouse settings, and clients can choose from two excellent restaurants that Victor is familiar with – one cooks up fish wildly caught from rivers, and the other specialises in rabbit dishes.  

 Rural heartiness and slow food

Rural villages in Sichuan’s lush mountains are an embodiment of rural idyll, consisting of clusters of farmhouses set in fertile valleys where the peasants grow a large variety of crops. At any of the villages Victor can take clients to optionally lodge with a host family; clients can then soak up the rural atmosphere by joining he hosts in the fields to gather the fresh vegetables and chase a duck or chicken for the pot, feasting on tasty and hearty country dishes.  It’s an operation as pure as slow food can get – although the farmers have never heard of slow food as a concept – and the day’s rhythms are wonderfully unhurried: the day’s meals are planned in the mornings depending on what is seasonally available in the fields, and then a large part of the day is dedication to the preparation of the day’s meals.  Even tofu is freshly pressed in traditional stone tofu presses, and the farmers create all kind of chilli sauces and smoked meats and pickled things that are used as appetisers or spice enhancers in the dishes. Clients can choose the level of immersion and involvement, and accommodation is accommodation is usually in the farmhouses with the farmer hosts (another option may be to stay in nearby hotels or guesthouses). Programmes are designed according to the guests’ preferences.   

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