When you have a favourite dish in whatever country you go to it’s always best to try the original one.

Kung Pao is based off a Sichuan dish with peanuts and chicken. The first time I had it was on a winters night in Montreal and it’s something that I always remember, from there on the first time I went to China it very quickly became my favourite dish. It often comes with onions, cucumber and juicy chicken, it is an amazing dish and it can cost about $1 – $1.50 so it’s cheap to boot.

When I was working in the restaurants in China I would go there for lunch every day – granted I didn’t always get my favourite dish as I also want to try adventurous new dishes but at least once to three times a week I would have it. Fast forward to when I’m done cooking and all that and I’m just travelling around, and I’m in central Chengdu – it’s a beautiful city full of amazing people and it’s dripping with culture. Left right and centre is incredibly spicy food and its cheap here so I’m in heaven. Eventually one night I’m drunk and stumbling around Chengdu and I find a hole in the wall restaurant, there’s a couple of people eating some bowls of noodles and what looks like a child running around. I think to myself how cute it is to have your kids at your work with you so I stumble up to the table and in my broken Chinese I ask for traditional Kung Pao chicken.

The waitress smiles and gives me a piece of paper, I walk up to the literal hole in the wall and put my receipt down for the kitchen to cook it for me. The kitchen staff look at me like I’m really odd so I smile and wave – they smiled back, small connection before a delicious meal. The waitress handed me my beer and a glass, and after about five minutes my dish arrives. It’s hot and the steam from it is billowing past her as she walks by with it.

I smile as she places it on my table and pick up my chopsticks. It’s an amazingly perfect mixture of sweet, sour and spicy. I pick up the little container of chilli oil and add some more spice because you only live once in “Mansville” right?! After about 20 minutes of eating and thinking about how lucky I am I take one last swig of my beer and go off to enjoy my other adventures. It was such a wonderful experience I’ll forever remember that smell it’s something that I missed and I hope to go back to do that again.

I love you all and I hope you enjoy this post and I really do hope you guys get to try traditional dishes from where they are instead of just having the western style, there is truly a difference and it’s truly worth it. I love you and I’ll see you on the next post.a