Chongqing Grilled Fish

Chongqing Grilled Fish is a spectacular dish that combines two cooking techniques: the fish is first split open, flattened, and grilled over charcoal until the skin is crispy and charred, then it's placed in a shallow pan and simmered in a spicy sauce. The sauce is the soul of the dish — a complex reduction of doubanjiang, fermented black beans, garlic, ginger, dried chilies, and Sichuan peppercorns, often with added ingredients like pickled vegetables, peanuts, or toasted sesame. The fish is served on a portable burner that keeps the sauce bubbling throughout the meal. As you eat, the sauce reduces and concentrates, becoming more intense with each bite. The contrast of textures — crispy grilled skin, flaky white flesh, and the oil-rich sauce — makes every forkful exciting. Several varieties of fish are used, with grass carp and sea bass being the most popular.

📖 History

Chongqing Grilled Fish is a relatively recent invention, tracing back to the early 2000s when a street vendor in the Wanzhou district of Chongqing experimented with grilling fish before wok-frying it in spicy sauce. The dish became an instant hit and spawned a chain of restaurants across the city. By 2010, 'kaoyu' specialty restaurants had spread across China, each with their own spin on the Chongqing original.