Why is Sichuan food weak in the Central Plains?

I have heard a lot of praise about Sichuan food in recent years. Listen carefully, most people in Sichuan are singing and singing on their own acre of land. Later, there was even a grand argument that "Sichuan food is Chinese food", solemnly stating that people all over the world should eat Sichuan food. This is a little basin consciousness. Historically, due to the barrier of mountains and rivers, Sichuan basin is a relatively closed and independent world, which often makes Sichuanese have the consciousness that "the basin is the world". There is nothing wrong with the self-reliance and self-confidence of basin consciousness, but intentional or unintentional complacency and arrogance are harmful to the development of Sichuan cuisine.

The Central Plains, where the author is located, has been a place where major flavor schools meet and merge since ancient times. Based on the Central Plains, it is convenient to look around. The author is willing to collect limited experience to give Sichuan cuisine a bystander's perspective and pass it on to the Fang family.

Sichuan food has been weak in Zhengzhou for ten years.

Generally speaking, Sichuan cuisine has been weak in Zhengzhou for more than ten years since the 1960s. Its concrete manifestation is the lack of local brand Sichuan restaurant in Zhengzhou, and the failure of Sichuanese to open a shop in Zhengzhou.

If mala Tang and hot pot are not included, Zhengzhou people's understanding of Sichuan cuisine began with Madaha Sichuan Restaurant. /kloc-at the beginning of 0/990, a Sichuan restaurant named Ma Daha appeared at the underground intersection of Zhongyuan Road in Zhengzhou. Its front is not facing south, and its taste is below average. It engages in popular Sichuan dishes such as ants climbing trees and boiling pork slices, and occasionally sells minced pork noodles. Because of its superior location, authentic taste and good business. A few years ago, this store disappeared from Zhongyuan Road because of street reconstruction and demolition, but when it comes to Ma Daha, Zhengzhou people still have a good impression. The second Sichuan restaurant worth mentioning is Huayuchuan. 1In the mid-1990s, the store opened its doors on Beierqi Road to welcome guests. Its facade is not big, but its grade is higher than that of Maha. It has a clean private room and private seats, and its Sichuan dishes such as boiled fish and Sichuan-style pork are OK. Sitting in the golden position of Zhengzhou Erqi business circle, the strong popularity brings the same strong business, and the frequent visitors are mainly shopping ladies and accompanying people who are tired of shopping. After several years of steady and steady progress, it has gained a good reputation in Zhengzhou market, and opened a branch next to Jinshui Road Provincial Committee, and the business is not bad. The third one that can be mentioned is Xinshu Garden. The new Shu Garden appeared late, but its scale is through a flight of stairs. The so-called Xinshu Garden, as its name implies, sells Sichuan food and attracts new Sichuan food. Xinshuyuan, the head office at the intersection of Nanyang Road, Agricultural Road, is currently the largest Sichuan restaurant in Zhengzhou. It includes all the hot pot and stir-fry. The spicy and mellow Sichuan cuisine with the songs and dances of Sichuan Opera has gathered a strong popularity. After the brand was built, Xinshuyuan began to slowly develop branches in Zhengzhou in recent years. I may be wronged or dissatisfied. To tell the truth, apart from Huayuchuan and Xinshuyuan, there is no third large Sichuan restaurant in Zhengzhou with a store age of more than five years.

Probably because the progress of local Sichuan restaurant in Zhengzhou is too slow. At the beginning of the new century, Sichuan cuisine masters and disciples came to Zhengzhou to support the construction of Sichuan cuisine in Henan. The first one is Master Zhang, who is stationed at the Red Coral Hotel opposite Zhengzhou Railway Station. When I first entered the Central Plains, I successfully entered a four-star hotel with a high starting point, which was remarkable. This makes Kong Rong, a culinary master from the Central Plains who has repeatedly missed in high-end hotels in Zhengzhou, humbly learn from pears. The overwhelming advertisements before the store opened made Master Zhang's fame known to all women and children. Not long after the opening, the author went to taste and learn from a local master. Although several years have passed, I still remember that the first course was crispy duck. The sage thought strangely, and quickly picked up a piece, only to see the oil raining down and the mouth greasy. After swallowing the meat, the cheeks were still a piece of oil. After eating this seat, a master shook his head and decided that the oil was too big. Sure enough, Red Coral soon announced that the kitchen was easy to change. Later, some people summed up their experience and thought that it was impossible to organize only a group of Sichuan chefs to challenge the Central Plains, and the whole brand should be involved. As a result, the famous Sichuan cuisine company Baguo Buyi, taking advantage of the Sichuan cuisine trend to sweep across the country, crossed the river and entered Zhengzhou by feeling the stones. After careful investigation, Baguo Buyi opened the first branch in the Central Plains in Qijing Road, Wei Wu Road, Zhengzhou, with a scale of less than 1000 square meters. Baguo Buyi pays attention to the combination of culture and catering, and is famous for being good at cultural packaging. Therefore, its branch in Zhengzhou completely cloned the Chengdu model, pretending to be a missionary of Sichuan cuisine culture, promoting authentic Sichuan cuisine with authentic Sichuan cuisine, and even the waiters were called authentic Sichuan sisters. With the attitude of "every new store needs a teacher", the author went to visit and study with experts. When he entered the store, he saw that the hall was decorated with Sichuan flavor, color, smell and taste, and the drinking utensils were also Sichuan cuisine and pots. He opened the menu, and it was still the same couple's lung slices and Dandan Noodles Sichuan cuisine. I ordered six dishes such as boiled fish at will, and the overall feeling was average. The taste is not much different from that of a couple's shop. It is unbearable to use oil like water. There has been no fire since the store opened. After less than a year of support, it closed the door and retreated. Afterwards, some people summed up their experience and thought that the store was too small, the location was a bit biased and there was no scale effect. In the sea of Wang Yang in Zhengzhou catering market, it is difficult to sail alone and sing with one hand. If it is an "aircraft carrier", it is designated as successful. At the end of 2004, a Sichuan Bashu restaurant with a history of 3,000 years, known as Aircraft Carrier Sichuan Restaurant, opened in Zhengzhou Agricultural Road. This Sichuan restaurant is located in a superior position, in a high-grade office building on the main road of the city, surrounded by high-income groups, with strong consumption power. With a business area of more than 3,000 square meters and an investment of tens of millions, it has high-grade decoration, magnificent doors and elegant taste. The neon advertisement of "3,000-year-old culture is the soul and dishes are the root" flashes in the night sky of Zhengzhou, which is refreshing and indicates the extraordinary move of the master going down the mountain. Moreover, the technical team is even more unusual. The master of Sichuan cuisine history is the general consultant of production, and Gao Zu is the administrative director of kitchen. He claims to tap the essence of Sichuan cuisine for 3,000 years and enrich the food life of Zhengzhou people. On the third day of opening, the author called a friend to try it. In this way, dried white meat and radish balls, which can be cleared by the number of people, are not enough for everyone to eat. When the price is still 320, everyone has to eat less vegetables and drink more special beer. In the blink of an eye, in 2006, just after Valentine's Day, a news that Bashu had been closed for 3,000 years shocked Zhengzhou catering industry. The insiders were shocked, and this seemingly good hotel suddenly closed down.

In Zhengzhou market, Sichuan cuisine, which lacks the support of big brand stores, can neither compete with Cantonese cuisine nor even compete with relatively weak flavor schools such as Hunan cuisine and Zhejiang cuisine. The weakness of Sichuan cuisine in Zhengzhou does not match its position as the largest "cuisine" in China, which greatly weakens and dwarfs the image of Sichuan cuisine in the Central Plains. The closure of Bashu for 3,000 years makes the author feel that the lack of local brand Sichuan restaurants in Zhengzhou is not an accidental phenomenon, nor is it as irrelevant as it seems that Sichuanese come to Zhengzhou to open stores. The author began to compare these two phenomena and tried to find some clues. Soon the author found that several successful Sichuan restaurants in Zhengzhou mentioned above have three characteristics: first, the operators are all locals; Second, local chefs are the majority in the kitchen, and Sichuan chefs are just embellishments; Third, they don't show off the authentic Sichuan style, but take the new Sichuan cuisine as their signboard. The operator is a local, which determines the accuracy of grasping the local taste and lays the foundation for the localization of Sichuan cuisine; Most of the chefs are locals, which provides technical support for the localization of Sichuan cuisine; The new Sichuan cuisine, which combines Sichuan cuisine technology with local tastes, caters to the local market demand well. Combining the technical principles of Sichuan cuisine with the actual market demand in Zhengzhou to create new Sichuan cuisine suitable for the taste of the Central Plains is the basic reason for the success of several famous Sichuan restaurants in Zhengzhou.

The three cases in Zhengzhou also have several basic characteristics: first, the operators are all Sichuanese; Secondly, relying on the skills of Sichuan cuisine masters, the kitchen is the unity of Sichuan cuisine chefs; Third, they all show off authentic Sichuan flavor, stick to the authentic road number and persevere. The operator is from Sichuan, and the inherent mindset determines the "authentic" principle of business guiding ideology; The unification of Sichuan cuisine kitchen determines the technical refusal to improve and adapt to the "authentic" operation mode; Under the guidance of the "authentic" principle, the catering products produced by the "authentic" technology must be dishes with "authentic" quality but no market. As we all know, the original Sichuan cuisine is not suitable for the appetite of Central Plains people. These Sichuan restaurants can not adapt to local conditions and be flexible, but can integrate Sichuan cuisine into the catering culture of the Central Plains. On the contrary, he is blindly confident and arrogant, thinking that a spoonful of Sichuan food can conquer the world. This is the fundamental reason why Sichuanese come to Zhengzhou to set up shop.

Combining the positive and negative examples, a basic conclusion is that in Zhengzhou catering market, "authentic" Sichuan food is not easy to use, and whoever is "authentic" will close the door, and those who are not "authentic" will become more and more popular. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" is a basic truth. Sichuan cuisine is spicy, mellow, oily and heavy, which is determined by the geographical and climatic characteristics of Sichuan, which are blocked by mountains and rivers, rainy and sunny. The central plains has a mild climate and four distinct seasons. Historically, it has long been the ruling center of the central dynasty and the fusion point of eight flavors. People's tastes tend to be harmonious with five flavors. Any exotic and distinctive flavor dishes are gradually assimilated into the harmony of five flavors after coming to the Central Plains. If Sichuan cuisine is not transformed, the high spicy threshold will block a large part of consumers. It is the right way to keep a number of characteristic Sichuan dishes as signs, with less spicy and less oil, and to develop marketable new dishes around the tastes of the Central Plains people. Three years ago, I came to Dongpo Restaurant in Jiameimei from Beijing, and I took this road to sell the Central Plains Sichuan cuisine that fascinated me. At present, four branches have been opened in Zhengzhou.

Some people say that Sichuan cuisine is a typical representative of farming culture, and * * * originated from other major flavor schools of farming civilization. Isn't it a typical representative of farming culture? The author thinks that Sichuan cuisine is essentially a simple and people-friendly grass-roots diet culture.

The myth of Sichuan cuisine should return to the grassroots.

The theory of "grassroots" began in America in the19th century. At that time, it was widely rumored that there was gold under the lush grass roots on the hillside among the gold miners in the western United States. Later, "grassroots" was given the connotation of "grassroots people", and grassroots was regarded as a symbol of strong cohesion, vitality and independence. Traditionally, culture is divided into elite culture and grassroots culture. "Grassroots culture" is relative to the official elite culture. Born humble, grew up in the people. Without the indoctrination of mainstream consciousness and the processing of cultural elites, it is full of local flavor and rich life interest. These two cultures are very different not only in content, but also in communication channels and values. Elite culture is advocated by the so-called mainstream society; Its main body used to be a "scholar-bureaucrat", but now it is a "national cadre" with various faces; The communication channel is vertical indoctrination from top to bottom; Values are often expressed as a unified concept of monism. Grassroots culture is rooted in the people; The holder is the general public; The communication channel is horizontal and well known; It is more restricted by the environment, showing obvious regionality, ignoring authority in values and advocating multiple values.

China's food culture is profound, but it can be roughly divided into five systems: court food, official food, local food, folk food and temple food. Palace cuisine and official cuisine are the highest in the temple and the elite representatives of food culture. Market dishes, folk dishes and temple fair dishes are far away from the rivers and lakes and are the grassroots representatives of food culture. Observing Sichuan cuisine from the perspective of this cultural division of labor, it is not difficult to find that Sichuan cuisine culture originates from the grass roots of food culture, and it is the most developed flavor school of China local cuisine and folk cuisine, and grass roots is the most fundamental feature of Sichuan cuisine culture.

The grassroots nature of Sichuan cuisine is mainly manifested in the grassroots nature of the main body of the dish and the grassroots nature of the main body of the diners. The grassroots nature of Sichuan cuisine can be subdivided into raw materials, tastes and dishes. The raw materials of Sichuan cuisine are not profound. Many people know Sichuan cuisine from the first time they eat mala Tang. Delicacies and seafood have never been the mainstream of Sichuan cuisine, and seafood only entered Sichuan cuisine after the late Qing Dynasty. Traditional Sichuan cuisine pays attention to coarse dishes and fine cooking, and is good at cooking unpretentious delicacies such as pork, beef, chicken and fish with this common and easily available raw material. The grassroots nature of Sichuan cuisine raw materials is also manifested in the fact that a large amount of leftovers, water, etc. can often turn decay into magic and cook famous dishes such as husband and wife lung slices. Even the spicy taste of Sichuan cuisine is a trait of staying away from the elite and embracing the grassroots. Different from Beijing-Lu Yu cuisine, which is upright, abides by the golden mean and pays attention to the harmony of five flavors, Sichuan cuisine pays attention to seasoning, rarely uses a single flavor, is good at blending compound flavors, is biased in taste, advocates spicy stimulation and individuality, and has diverse tastes and endless changes. As for the grassroots nature of Sichuan cuisine, you can get a glimpse of the leopard by the names of these famous dishes, such as husband and wife lung slices, Mapo tofu, bean dregs duck, boiled cabbage, crispy squid and Deng Ying beef. Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to call Sichuan cuisine the most popular cuisine in China. According to statistics, there are more than 4,000 dishes in Sichuan cuisine, among which 1000 dishes are often eaten. In addition, Sichuan cuisine also concentrates on the most colorful snacks in China. There are many famous snacks here, such as Mala Tang, Dandan Noodles, Zhong jiaozi, Lai Tangyuan and Long Wonton. It is really a snack kingdom and a sea of flavors. The grassroots nature of Sichuan cuisine diners is highlighted in its most common enjoyment by the whole people. The biggest feature of Sichuan cuisine is that it is a kind of cuisine that really enjoys the participation of the whole people. As Professor Zhang Qijun pointed out in Cooking Principles, "Sichuan cuisine is a dish eaten by ordinary Sichuanese. Unlike Henan cuisine and Hunan cuisine, although they are named after Henan and Hunan, most people in Henan and Hunan have never eaten them. " Generally speaking, the so-called "cuisines" are just popular words in a limited elite circle, far from ordinary people. For example, Manchu banquet is a famous dish in Beijing, sea cucumber with scallion is a famous dish in Shandong, three sets of ducks are a famous dish in Jiangsu, and roast suckling pig is a famous dish in Guangdong. However, how many people have the opportunity to enjoy these famous dishes often? Unlike Beijing and Shandong, which advocate nobility, Jiangsu and Guangdong cater to luxury and wealth. Sichuan cuisine seems to be specially made for ordinary people, and any Sichuanese who has enough food and clothing can munch on Sichuan-style pork.

Sichuan cuisine has never been an elite cultural idol, but a master of grassroots culture. As common as a grass-headed man, there is no distance, and it is the food closest to the lives of ordinary people. People love Sichuan food, but in fact they love their own grass, which is imperfect but colorful.

The first is the basin effect of mountains and rivers. From a global perspective, it is a common phenomenon that the more mountains and rivers block places with inconvenient transportation, the easier it is to form grassroots cultural characteristics. "Shu Dao is difficult, and it is difficult to go to the sky! Until the two rulers of this area forced their way through in the foggy age. Forty-eight thousand years have passed and there is no contact with Qin Sai. " Sichuan is deep inland, and it is located in the southwest corner. Qinling Mountains in the north, Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau in the south, Daba Mountain in the east, Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in the west, surrounded by mountains, and the Central Plains, bazi and hills crisscross. There are endless mountains in the west and south, endless loess slopes and barren Gobi desert in the north. The rivers in the territory are criss-crossed, winding and swift, and are all over the dangerous gorge and shoal, so it is difficult to get into the river. The barrier between mountains and rivers has caused huge communication barriers, which not only weakened the influence of the orthodox culture of the central dynasty, but also caused great difficulties for the spread of Sichuan elite culture.

The second is the island effect of political marginalization. For a long time, Sichuan has been on the political fringe far away from the ruling center of the Central Plains dynasty, and it is a paradise for warlords to separate themselves and take political refuge. Because it is in a corner, it has nothing to do with the overall situation. The control of the unified dynasties over Sichuan was relatively loose, including ideological and cultural control. Sichuan has always been a region with weak control over imperial power, and all political conflicts and military conflicts will be weakened here. Here, the weather is fine, families give people enough food, there is no worry about floods and droughts, and they rarely suffer from smog. Politically, the sky is high and the emperor is far away, and geographically, mountains and rivers are separated, so that Sichuanese can safely hide in the basin and unite. They don't know how to have a Han dynasty, and they can enjoy all kinds of material civilization achievements and freely bloom their thoughts, no matter Wei and Jin dynasties. Because it is far away from the domination and interference of dynasty orthodox culture, Sichuan can maintain the original ecological structure of culture to the greatest extent, and is less enslaved by elite culture, so that grassroots can grow freely and freely. The emperor of the Central Plains eats yours, and the Sichuanese eat mine. This is not only a land of abundance, but also a comfortable nest for the grassroots.

The third is the immigration effect of population diversity. Sichuan is a big immigrant province. In the three hundred years since the Kangxi dynasty, large-scale immigrants entered Sichuan three times. From the fifth year of Chongzhen in Ming Dynasty (1632) to the nineteenth year of Kangxi in Qing Dynasty (1680), there was a melee in Sichuan for nearly half a century. First, the Great Western King was furious and took advantage of the situation. "Everything is born to raise people, and no one is virtuous. Kill, kill, kill, kill! " Then the Ming loyalist came in, the Manchu Eight Banners soldiers came in, and the Wu Sangui army came in again, killing Chengdu in ten rooms and killing Sichuan in the wild. Coupled with Dujiangyan siltation, floods and droughts have occurred year after year, and a large number of refugees have been displaced. In the eighteenth year of Shunzhi, the official population of Sichuan was only 80,000! It has formed the lowest valley in the history of domestic population. Faced with the shortage of people in Sichuan, Kangxi had to engage in the movement of "immigrants filling Sichuan". "According to people from Hunan, Guangdong, Fujian and Guizhou, things are cultivated in the wild; People gathered by the river, inside and outside Shanhaiguan, east and west of Shaanxi, and around the mountains are hiding in the city. This is the famous "Huguang fills Sichuan" in history. The second great migration was in the period of War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression. People in the enemy-occupied areas of North China and South China flooded into Sichuan to escape the persecution of the Japanese aggressors, and the anti-Japanese military and civilians all over the country cooperated with the strategic shift and moved to Sichuan to participate in the war of resistance. The third migration took place from the pre-liberation to the1960s. In the early days of liberation, hundreds of thousands of cadres went to Sichuan for construction. Later, in order to cooperate with the construction of the third line, a large number of factories in the north and Shanghai moved inward, and workers and their families entered Sichuan. A large number of immigrants have fundamentally refreshed the permanent residence pattern in Sichuan, which has quickly turned Sichuan into a large immigrant province where local people live in different places and live together. As early as the late Qianlong period 1790, the population of Sichuan had exceeded 9 million, most of whom were Hakkas from other provinces. " Sichuanese are either Qin or Chu. "The complexity of population sources leads to cultural diversity, which is not conducive to the unity of elite culture. Many immigrants from other provinces come to Sichuan from all corners of the country, and everyone has different eating habits. It is impossible to unify complex eating habits with one taste. The only way is to let a hundred flowers blossom and eat their own food. With the passage of time, people's diet gradually merged with each other, thus forming a unique style of Sichuan cuisine and various strange snacks. Another great contribution of "Huguang fills Sichuan" is that it brings peppers to Sichuan cuisine that has just been introduced into Huguang from Southeast Asia. Pepper and Sichuan cuisine from afar, after a brief encounter, soon brought out the best in each other, so Sichuan cuisine was sublimated from "delicious spicy" to "spicy".

Due to the interaction of geographical environment and historical experience, elite culture can never dominate Sichuan culture, and grassroots culture has become the main theme of Sichuan culture. Grass-roots culture profoundly affects and restricts the way of thinking of Sichuanese. Grassroots nature brings self-reliance and self-confidence, but it also brings complacency and arrogance, which makes Sichuanese often have the consciousness that "the basin is the world" and "Sichuan food is Chinese food". Sichuanese live in a corner, and grassroots knowledge is inevitably narrow. They have a tradition of arrogance and arrogance. If they are small and rich, they want to give directions and "cook for people all over the world." Don't you know that the grass-roots culture with a biased sword will never become the mainstream culture of a society, and Sichuan cuisine will always be a local flavor dish for Shu people to entertain themselves? The grassroots nature of Sichuan cuisine determines that it will never become the mainstream food culture that dominates the whole country. In China, where the concept of unity is unbreakable, it is not only a behavior, but also a value tradition. Just as it is impossible for a country to popularize Sichuan dialect into Putonghua, Sichuan cuisine can be the largest local dish, but it can never be the central flavor that dominates the whole country. At this point, Sichuanese should think deeply.

Therefore, the correct orientation of Sichuan cuisine is to make the first local flavor dish in China, not to panic about "making it for people all over the world". Now, this first position is being challenged by Cantonese people more and more forcefully. Fortunately, after the reform and opening up, a large number of Sichuan chefs opened their eyes to see the world, and thousands of them went out of the basin, south to Guangdong and north to Beijing. They keep pace with the times, choose a large number of local seasonings and raw materials according to local eating habits and tastes, boldly learn from cooking methods such as Cantonese cuisine and Hunan cuisine to transform Sichuan cuisine, and finally form a unique new school of Sichuan cuisine. A few years ago, a new genre of Sichuan cuisine, which rose in Guangzhou, Beijing and other places, was once popular all over the country and fascinated thousands of diners. This innovative development trend of improving Sichuan cuisine by breaking through the so-called "cuisine" barrier is an important milestone in the history of Sichuan cuisine development. After years of exploration and efforts by Sichuan chefs, this new school of Sichuan cuisine, which combines the tastes of the North and the South with the fashion style, is winning glory for Sichuan all over the country.

For Sichuan cuisine, it is better than anything to lose the illusion that Laozi is the best in the world and make more efforts in market thinking.