Xu Jia Cai: Folk Sichuan, Modern Technique, Another Road

World Travel 编辑部 · 2026-09-10 · 5 min read

Xu Jia Cai: Folk Sichuan, Modern Technique, Another Road

On Chengdu's one-star list, Xu Jia Cai (Wangjiang branch) takes a different line. It does not push Sichuan cooking towards high-end seafood. It takes folk Sichuan flavours and cooks them again with modern technique.

What "folk Sichuan" tastes of

Sichuan cuisine is described as at once plain and fresh: the official kitchens refined and particular, the farmhouse cooking full of the soil.

By finer division it has three schools:

• The Chengdu school (Rong), from western Sichuan, also called the upper-river school. Its dishes are refined and delicate, mostly old traditional recipes; it was once the food of the governor's household, and the Sichuan dishes at formal banquets are still cooked to Chengdu standards.
• The Chongqing school (Yu), the lower-river school: rougher, faster to reinvent, bolder with ingredients.
• The Zigong school (salt-merchant), the small-river school: refined, lavish, odd, numbing-hot, fresh and full-bodied.

Xu Jia Cai joins the Chengdu school's refinement to the farmhouse's earthiness.

Reading the menu

Its signatures happen to cover different faces of Sichuan cooking:

• Qiaoke fish — the river-fish line
• Squab with green Sichuan pepper — pepper is first among the three peppers; the green sort brings a clean numbing and aroma
• Hand-torn chicken — between cold dish and home cooking
• Home-style sea cucumber — the homestyle profile is the most basic of the compound flavours, and using it on sea cucumber is exactly "folk flavour plus premium ingredient"

One Michelin star

The Michelin Guide began starring good restaurants in 1926 and adopted three stars in 1931; it judges ingredient quality, mastery of flavour and technique, personality, value and consistency.

One star means "a very good restaurant in its category — worth a stop." Xu Jia Cai holds one.

Practical

• Style: folk Sichuan with modern technique — lighter than a banquet house, more careful than a neighbourhood kitchen
• Order: qiaoke fish, squab with green pepper, hand-torn chicken, home-style sea cucumber
• Good for: everyday meals of two to six; easy to order across the menu
• On the pepper: the green Sichuan pepper is the clean-numbing kind — say so if you'd rather it mild
• Price and booking: by the seasonal menu; reserve ahead

Related

• Chaimenhui: Sichuan's Twenty-Four Flavours, Put to Seafood
• Pan Sun Shi: A Line of Du Fu's Poetry, a Century of Braise

Photos

Sources

• Wikipedia: Sichuan cuisine; Michelin Guide