Qiaotou Hotpot

Qiaotou Hotpot is said to have begun around 1908, in the late Qing, amid the wharf street life of Chongqing's Nanjimen district. The city's hotpot started as a rough riverside dish, with boatmen and porters washing beef offal and blanching it on clay stoves in a numbing-spicy broth; Qiaotou grew from such pole-and-basket stalls into a storefront, becoming one of the city's earliest dedicated hotpot houses.

Among Chongqing's many hotpot names it has long been prominent, ranked with early houses such as Yunlongyuan, Shuyuan, and Yiyaoyi. Named a China Time-Honored Brand by the former Ministry of Commerce in 1994 and re-confirmed by MOFCOM in 2006, it is an old house often cited when visitors first encounter Chongqing hotpot culture.

Its red broth is stir-fried from beef tallow, chili, Sichuan pepper, fermented broad-bean paste, and many spices, prized for a bright red color and a deep, lingering numbing heat; tripe and duck intestine must be blanched to just the right crisp tenderness, embodying the fresh, numbing, spicy, scalding essence of the city's tripe hotpot.

As a Time-Honored Brand, Qiaotou carries forward a hotpot tradition born in the wharf markets of Chongqing, a living window onto how the city's hotpot rose from humble riverside stalls to renowned houses.