UNESCO designated Chengdu the City of Gastronomy in February, 2010. Chengdu is an internationally-renowned food culture city as well as the home to the Sichuan-style cuisine. Its diversity in food culture is attributable to a time-honored history and a variety of ecological, cultural and ethnic resources. The local catering industry is headed primarily by large numbers of famous restaurants, caterers, cookery academies, institutions and associations. Good cooks are the major brand of Chengdu as a "city of food culture" as well as the core resources of local caterers and restaurants.

As a creative and innovative city in terms of food culture, Chengdu is known for a dozen exclusive honors in history: the earliest distillery in China, the oldest center of Chinese tea culture, the first center of Chinese cuisine culture and the first Chinese cuisine museum in China.

Take the Sichuan-style cuisine for example. As one of the four Chinese cuisine systems, it’s known internationally for a spicy hot flavor. A proverb goes that just as Chinese food culture is the highest developed in the world, the Sichuan-style cuisine is the best known in China.

Sichuan-style cuisines may be prepared in a wide variety of flavors to cater to individual tastes. Emphasizing particularly the combination of color, smell, flavor and look, Sichuan-style cuisine integrates the conspicuous features of the southern China cuisine and the northern China cuisine. They are best known for diverse and strong tastes. The most proverbial of all Sichuan-style cuisines include over 300 recipes, e.g. Shredded Pork with Garlic Sauce, Kung Pao Chicken, Mapo Tofu, Zhangcha Duck and Tripe Hotpot.

sauteed diced chicken with chili pepper (Phtoto by Jiuchi)