Chongqing, Sichuan basin
Hot Pot
A simmering broth at the table, raw ingredients dipped in by the diner — Chongqing's communal dish, named for its method, not its meat.
The broth is the menu.
Hot pot is a Chinese cooking method that's older than most Chinese dishes — a pot of broth on the table, ingredients dipped in by chopstick to cook to the eater's preferred doneness. The dish only became a recognisable category when Chongqing developed its signature red broth (heavy with Sichuan peppercorn, dried chilies, beef tallow, doubanjiang) in the late 19th century. From there, dozens of regional variants — Beijing instant-boiled mutton, Cantonese clear broth, Yunnan mushroom — branched off.
4 · Plate
Chongqing, Sichuan basin
Hot Pot
A simmering broth at the table, raw ingredients dipped in by the diner — Chongqing's communal dish, named for its method, not its meat.
The communal dish of the Sichuan basin. Chongqing claims hot pot as a local invention — dock workers on the Yangtze in the late Qing dynasty cooking offal scraps in a shared spice pot at the riverside became, over a century, a city-wide dining culture. Chongqing today has more hot-pot restaurants per capita than any city in the world; the dish defines the city the way shanghai-style or peking define theirs.
The mandarin-duck pot — yuanyang guo, a single pot divided into red-spicy and white-mild halves — is the modern restaurant standard, because not everyone in the party wants the Chongqing-level má la. Purists will tell you a real Chongqing hot pot is single-pot, red only, and unforgiving. They’re not wrong; they’re also not always company.
Build a dip sauce.
The Chongqing default is sesame oil, garlic, chopped scallion, sometimes cilantro, sometimes a quail egg, sometimes oyster sauce. The northern Beijing default is sesame paste, fermented red bean curd, chives. Each diner builds their own bowl at a side counter before sitting down. The dip is the second flavour layer; the broth is the first; the protein is the third.