A taste of Chongqing
Pei Jie Lao Huoguo (Jiaochangkou flagship)
珮姐老火锅（较场口总店）
The house most often credited locally as the ancestor of the nine-grid pot, with a lineage its own telling traces to a Republican-era tripe hotpot stall run by a woman known as Pei Jie near Jiaochangkou. It has since grown into a national brand with branches including one inside Chongqing Raffles City, but the Yuzhong flagship is the one to eat at. It is busy, touristed and photographed constantly, and it is still a genuinely good beef-tallow pot. Understand what the nine-grid is before you order: it is ONE shared broth under a cast-iron grid dividing the surface into nine cells, not nine different soups. The cells differ only by heat convection. The centre square (中心格) is the hottest and rolls constantly, and is for things that cook in seconds - tripe, duck intestine, kidney. The four edge cells (十字格) are medium and take meat and fish. The four corners (四角格) are the gentlest and are where you leave blood curd, tofu and potato to simmer slowly. Put potato in the centre or tripe in a corner and you ruin both.