Great Chongqing, Park Row: 'Truly criminal'
The gradual decline of a once Great restaurant
A generous dose of Sichuan peppercorns is just the ticket in cold climes — efficient as it is at blasting away colds, frozen faces and weak-willed friends. Sadly it seems that Great Chongqing is no longer the go-to spot for such blasting, or, well, anything. Please keep PXandTarts in your thoughts during this difficult time, at one point he counted it among his top five restaurants. I’ll hand over to him for a very well-written rant.
I was introduced to Great Chongqing several years ago by an acquaintance who has just been handed a suspended sentence for possession with intent to supply. While I obviously can’t condone such behaviour, it does shed new light upon that trite influencer motto ‘tastes like crack’. A phrase which, in Bristol, in 2026, should be as welcome as a slave trader statue yet still seems in regular use among those who, if they are indeed going to eat everything, should maybe consider eating a dictionary.
I can’t remember exactly what we ate on that first visit years ago but there were certainly noodles, green beans and pork galore, with fistfuls of chilli and Sichuan peppercorns lobbed at everything in sight. The space was bare and utilitarian, with none of the kitsch… signage… currently adorning the walls, which treads a strange line between peer pressure and accusation (“Do you work hard today?”, “WHY (do people dring)?”).
But the food back then was vivid, verging on lurid. Nothing like the Chinese food I’d enjoyed as a child — the classic three-course prawn crackers, sweet and sour chicken, pineapple fritters — nor indeed the dim sum, roast meats and fried rice I ate at a nondescript St Michael’s Hill takeaway with my Hong Kong team mates after five-a-side.
Of course, at the time I didn’t fully understand that referring to “Chinese food” was the equivalent of calling something “European food”. But Great Chongqing was different. My mouth fizzed like I’d been guzzling spiked sherbet, brow soaking with sweat from the chilli onslaught.
I couldn’t get enough. Great Chongqing’s dry-fried green beans and duck tongues in chilli powered me through wedding planning, lockdown, hospitalisation, divorce and multiple Tottenham defeats. Since my first visit in those halcyon days of 2018, I have eaten at Great Chongqing more than any other restaurant, watching on with a mixture of interest and trepidation as the bloggers and blaggers have trickled in. The good, the bad and the ugly, and very often more than one of those. Universal praise followed, some of it more informed and insightful than others.
What nobody really seemed to notice was the gradual shift in customer demographic followed by an inevitable, creeping reduction in deployment of chilli and Sichuan pepper. A spice level that would have been a three became a five. Not only that but the cooking of proteins became inconsistent, the broths often lacking clarity and balance. After a few too many indifferent meals, I stopped bothering.
But, on a recent dreich January evening, a group of five of us found ourselves in dire need of succour and sustenance, so we bundled back in and plonked ourselves down on the first available table. Which was any table we wanted bar one, the restaurant hardly brimming with customers. Post-Christmas hangover? An economy in freefall? A harbinger of the meal to come?
Because no green tea was available and the only herbal tea was served cold, bottles of Tsing Tao and the odd rogue Diet Coke littered the table. For years, I assumed Great Chongqing had a BYO policy. In fact it seems the servers were just too unfailingly polite, turning blind eyes to our contraband petrol station wine.
Via overly sweet, gloopy kung bao chicken (£13) (which should have rung alarm bells if I hadn’t been too hungry to notice, although the tenderness of the meat hinted at velveting), I stuck to the big hitters. The dishes I have ordered time and time again. Black fungus with vinegar (£6.50). Crispy duck Chongqing xiaomian (£12.50). Grilled fish with hot chillies (£35), which I have probably ordered more times than I have seen Spurs lose next door in The White Harte pub.
Despite the name, nothing was great. But first, the good. The fungus boasted its typical, strangely addictive combination of robust slipperiness and fragile snap, flanked by crunchy cucumber, peanuts and sesame seeds in a cleansing, acidic pool of vinegar. Cucumber salad (£6) was basically the same but without the mushroom, so not as good. But two bowls of vegetables does not a meal make, even deep in the depths of self-denial January.
Bad: the grilled fish with hot chilli. The fish itself was fine. A gruesome blighter of a whole sea bass, gurning like an influencer mid-mouthful of yet another “collab” (like Trump just collab-ed with Venezuela). Flakey, moist, slightly crisped at the edges.
Back in the glory days of Pochettino it came surrounded by mostly coins of potato that determinedly held their shape as they softened soaked up the glorious melange of fish juices, oil and chilli, along with a few peanuts and some coriander for herbal freshness. It now comes under a heap of detritus including, but not limited to, cauliflower, tofu, lotus roots, spam and fish balls, in addition to everything else, which, to be Frank, seems to distract from a distinct lack of attacking football. I mean intensity. The broth now less brilliant scarlet, more gloomy ochre. Half of the dish’s title was conspicuous by its absence.
And, unfortunately, the ugly: my once-trusted xiaomian came as a tangle of overcooked noodles in a murky stock of sesame and a nudge towards a vaguely anise-scent. Worst of all, the duck breast was chewier than a Christmas dinner turkey that started its cook on bonfire night, its skin as flabby as the sprouts that went on at the same time.
While it is unfair to blame an influx of influencers for uncooked duck skin, as annoying as they might be, the obvious correlation between increased social media publicity and receding authenticity is one that should be given some attention. Of course there is no easy answer to be found in a rant curtailed at 1000 words.
Bristol now has more “Chinese” restaurants than at any time in the last twenty years, and almost certainly any time before that. When I first moved here, there was no Great Chongqing. I’m still happy we have it now, even if it is more of an Okay Chongqing these days. It’s what the influencers are doing to our city’s food scene that is truly criminal.
All words by PXandTarts, photos as labelled. Edited by Meg Houghton-Gilmour
Great Chongqing, 52 Park Row, BS1 5LH
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