Chongqing people love to eat frogs, but for a period of time in the last century, the official ban on eating frogs in the name of "protecting beneficial insects", many gourmets will refer to "pandas" as "frogs", as a "joint code" to continue to eat frogs. After the trend passed, there was no need to sneak around eating frogs, but a restaurant in Shapingba still used "panda" as a signboard to show its positioning as a "frog eating specialty store", which was the predecessor of the Kongzhao Panda Pavilion.
At present, the Kongzhao Panda Pavilion has been moved to Beicang, located in the Beicheng Tianjie business district, and the positioning and decoration tend to be younger, as evidenced by the panda decorations that can be seen everywhere in the store. These cute pandas appear on dolls, paintings, tableware, and even the logo is a panda holding a rice bowl, such a cute style is quite special in the five big and three thick Jianghu restaurants, and has also received praise from many young diners.
Despite its lively and cute brand image, the dishes of Kongzhao Panda Pavilion are typical of Jianghu cuisine. In the meat dishes, frogs, eels, fish, rabbits, and chickens are the main dishes, and the cooking techniques are boiled, dry roasted, stir-fried, fragrant marinated, braised and so on, and they are heavy numb, spicy and heavy oil. For the signature frog, two methods are most popular, dry boiled and boiled. The former uses a moderately sized frog, which has a dry texture and a spicy flavor that penetrates into the frog meat and is stir-fried with oil residue to add to the tenderness of the frog meat. Compared with the spicy flavor of the dry-roasted method, the numbness of the boiled frog is more prominent, and the meat is more juicy; Cucumbers, loofahs and fungus in the side dishes also provide a crisp texture. However, compared with the Xianghe specialty restaurant of the frog specialty restaurant, the frog meat of the empty panda restaurant is slightly inferior, and most of it is thigh meat, and it also lacks "sharp goods" such as frog belly and "petal meat", which veteran diners may not find enjoyable.
Since Chongqing Jianghu cuisine has a similar cooking method for frogs and eels, restaurants that are good at cooking frogs are usually the signature of the store. The texture of the dry-roasted eel section of the Kongzhao Panda Pavilion is thick, and only peppercorns and chili peppers are needed to create a charred taste on the outside and tender on the inside. In addition, the store also specially added pickled pepper as a seasoning, and the unique sour and spicy flavor makes the eel section have a brighter taste and more fragrant. It is worth mentioning that the dishes of the Kongzhao Panda Pavilion are generally heavy, and even many locals who are used to eating Jianghu cuisine feel that they can't resist it. Friends who are sensitive to spicy taste suggest that when ordering, tell the clerk to be less spicy and less spicy.
