Guizhou is largely unfamiliar to most outsiders, but many Chinese consider the beautiful province one of the country’s last destinations unspoiled by mass tourism.
Nestled between the Hunan and Yunnan provinces, Guizhou’s mountainous terrain has caused infrastructure development to lag behind other regions. Because of the various ethnic minorities that make up more than one-third of the population and who would often rather keep a more traditional way of life, Guizhou ranks at the bottom of the list for GDP per capita by province.
Despite the region’s relative obscurity, two of its culinary products loom large over the entire country’s food scene. The first is a national icon: the famous spirit Moutai baijiu. Moutai sells roughly 10 billion RMB of the liquor per year, which has been served at Chinese state dinners since the days of Mao Zedong. The second plays a more understated, behind-the-scenes role: Lao Gan Ma chili bean sauce started with very humble beginnings in Guizhou.
A local woman, Tao Huabi, started selling rice noodles smothered in her homemade sauce. As locals began to ask her for take-home bottles, and other restaurants started using her sauce, a business was born and now has annual revenues of 2.5 billion RMB. Although she is illiterate and her son had to teach her to write her name to sign legal documents, Tao Huabi was clearly no dummy. After noticing that the main road by her shop had transformed into a cargo route, she began giving bottles of the sauce away to truck drivers, widening her footprint across the country. She now has an empire of sauces and condiments beloved by chefs and widely available worldwide in Asian groceries.
And that brings us to Shanghai’s best Guizhou food at Qian Xiang Ge. Although the menu is at standard length for China, coming in at roughly the size of an encyclopedia, more than a few of the dishes are familiar. For example, the lazi chicken (辣子鸡, làzǐ jī), more commonly known in its Sichuan iteration, is a must-order. Instead of arriving chopped on the bone under a pile of red chilies and mouth-numbing Sichuan peppercorns, the Guizhou version was paired with potatoes, garlic and Lao Gan Ma-style chili sauce. In addition to the sauce, the provincial cuisine features an even greater range of sour-spicy dishes and smoky chilies, giving many familiar ingredients surprising depth and new flavor profiles.
Other dishes we loved were the “sweat-stealing chicken” (盗汗鸡, dàohàn jī), which arrived in a purple hotpot-style clay dish and is steamed in its own juices (hence the “sweat”). The succulent meat falls off the bone and is a nice palate-cleansing break from the other dishes with more powerful flavors. The Wujiang fish in sour soup (酸汤乌江鱼) was another crowd pleaser, its deep crimson broth scented with lemongrass and reminiscent of classic Thai tom yum soup. We finished off the meal with a simple, sticky-sweet millet dessert (小米渣, xiǎomǐ zhā), which we’d never seen in other Shanghai restaurants.
No
t only is Qian Xiang Ge the go-to restaurant for exiled Guizhou natives, but its authentic dishes have proved popular enough that they’ve opened several locations around town. For central Shanghai residents, the Pudong (Lujiazui) branch is likely the most convenient. It is located in the shadows of three dominating skyscrapers, including the new 128-story Shanghai tower (the world’s second tallest), and the walk from the subway makes for a lovely close-up view of the city’s towering lights.
Expect to pay about 150 RMB per person if you order a range of dishes. Of course, you should pair local dishes with the local spirit, and there are plenty of regional Guizhou baijius on offer. If you BYOB, there’s no charge, however, and they’ll even bring you a traditional mini carafe and the proper thimble-sized baijiu shot glasses. Ganbei!
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Published on November 19, 2015
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