Grilled Fish
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Grilled Fish
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Grilled Fish (Simplified Chinese: 烤鱼; Traditional Chinese: 烤魚; Pinyin: Kǎo yú; also kao yu; often Chongqing / Wanzhou grilled fish / 万州烤鱼) is a contemporary Chinese restaurant specialty: a butterflied whole fish is marinated and charcoal- or oven-grilled until the skin is crisp, then transferred to a shallow pan of chili–Sichuan pepper sauce (mala, pickled-pepper, fermented-black-bean, garlic, and other house styles) and kept simmering at the table with vegetables such as potato, bean sprouts, and lotus root. Soft marketing claims that invent exact "700-year" royal origins for the modern chain form should be treated as folk or promotional; the nationwide boom is widely tied to early-2000s Wanzhou/Chongqing night-market and specialty-restaurant culture. It is not plain steamed fish, not Sichuan Boiled Fish (水煮鱼), and not West Lake Vinegar Fish.[1]
Characteristics
Crisp grilled skin; tender flesh; bubbling spicy oil-sauce; shareable iron-pan service; many regional flavor variants.
Ingredients (overview)
Whole freshwater or other fish (grass carp, bass, etc. in many shops); chili, Sichuan pepper, bean paste, garlic, oil; vegetable sides. Overview only—not a recipe or shop ad.
History and culture
Modern Chongqing–Wanzhou restaurant category that spread nationally as specialty kao yu houses; local industry writing styles Wanzhou as a grilled-fish center. Soft exclusive ancient inventorship stories are folk. English menus say "grilled fish," "Chongqing grilled fish," or "kao yu." See Chong Qing Hot Pot and Sichuan Boiled Fish.
Serving and variations
Communal restaurant main with sides cooked in the sauce. See Chong Qing Hot Pot, Sichuan Boiled Fish, and Shaokao.