Chongqing Kitchen Menu

Chongqing Kitchen is an owner-operated Te Aro restaurant devoted to Sichuan hotpot and cooked regional dishes. Established in 2019, it brings the flavours of Sichuan and Chongqing to a Dixon Street dining room where the meal can be as interactive or as direct as diners prefer. A table may assemble a bubbling hotpot from broth and individual ingredients, or order finished plates, noodles and dumplings without committing to the full communal format.

Hotpot begins with the broth. Spicy choices include an in-house beef-tallow base made with local tallow and imported spices from Sichuan and Chongqing, while non-spicy alternatives allow a gentler meal. A two-flavour pot can divide the table between contrasting broths. From there, diners select among meat, eggs, seafood, fish products, vegetables, tofu, other soy products and noodles, creating a sequence in which ingredients are cooked and shared at the table.

The cooked-food side of the menu gives Sichuan technique equal weight. Mapo tofu and kung pao chicken appear alongside water-boiled fish, fish fillet in green-peppercorn chilli oil and poached beef in hot chilli oil. Pork ear, beef tripe and pork offal dishes broaden the range for more adventurous orders. Chilli heat is only part of the profile: fragrant peppercorn, garlic, sesame, pickled mustard and spring-onion oil introduce numbing, savoury and sour notes across different plates.

Noodles and street foods provide a more compact way into the restaurant's regional cooking. Chongqing street noodles, hot-and-spicy braised beef noodles and fish rice noodles turn broth and seasoning into complete individual meals. Wontons in red chilli oil add a smaller, silkier option, while brown-sugar jelly offers a cooling street dessert after a heavily spiced meal. Those choices also make Chongqing Kitchen accessible when a shared hotpot feels too large or time-intensive.

Address: 42 Dixon Street, Te Aro, Wellington 6011, New Zealand

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