Great Chongqing, Park Row: ‘Unfussy, authentic and distinctive cooking’ – restaurant review

Great Chongqing is not new. It has sat humbly on Park Row providing fiercely hot Sichuanese cuisine to (mostly) Bristol’s Chinese population since 2018. It’s one of those restaurants that will never make the pages of Harden’s or Square Meal. It’s not crowded with people taking photos of their food on their phones, it’s not wine lists and dessert menus. It’s cans of coke on bare tables, laminated menus and utilitarian chairs.

Great Chongqing one of a few of these kinds of restaurants in central Bristol. Further down the hill ,you’ll find Tasty To Go with its offal-heavy menu and just round the corner from that is Nice Spice which will lure you in with heady scents of Chinese roast meats from anywhere in the vicinity. Back up on the triangle Guoguoyan has just opened having taken over from Woky Ko and mere metres away is Toro Chinese which is also worth visiting.

These brightly lit and functional restaurants are not designed with leisurely three course meals in mind. They cater largely to Bristol’s thousands of Chinese students, for whom they presumably provide a very welcome taste of home. And for those who are not as familiar with black fungus salads or Hofan noodles, they are a taste of adventure.

On a recent evening, Great Chongqing is busy, which isn’t unusual. There are probably enough people who have recommended this unassuming joint on Park Row to me to fill the restaurant and its tiny courtyard garden twice over.

Due to childhood Saturday evenings spent fighting with siblings over prawn crackers, sweet and sour chicken and spare ribs with a backdrop of X Factor, I find it extremely difficult to resist ordering anything fried in a Chinese restaurant, for nostalgia’s sake.

A platoon of vegetable spring rolls (£4.00) proves my Achilles heel this time, but I have no regrets. You’d have to eat about 500 of the things to be able to claim one of your five-a-day – they’re that sparse inside – but you’d likely be quite happy to. They’re good.

I shan’t apologise for giving into temptation; these were the epitome of beige deliciousness

Dishes at Chongqing vary from nought to five on the Richter scale, with one being minor mouth trembles and five being seismic spice inciting sweat levels reminiscent of scenes from Airplane! and coughing that will earn you looks of paranoia from fellow chopstick-wielders.

With our cauldron of crispy duck hofan noodles in soup (£10.50) we opted for four and handled it extremely well, thank you very much, helped along by the umami tones hiding behind the heat and the chunks of tender meat.

Not an ideal dish for sharing but even between two us this was generous

Just-cooked shredded potato in vinegar (£9.50) is an overwhelming pile of Chongqing’s answer to french fries, but sadly for me the al dente matchsticks don’t hold quite the same appeal as their European counterparts.

Nevertheless another interesting experience in the name of culinary adventure.

I just can’t help but think I would have enjoyed this more if it was fried (but that says a lot more about me than it does this dish)

Tissues (free) are already on the table, but blue surgical gloves (also free) are brought over with English brown crab in chilli and ginger sauce (£18.80). Both are essential in the battle to extract precious nuggets of crab meat from sauce-laden shell. Eating this way regularly would be hideously impractical, but today it is fun and mindful and satisfying. The sauce isn’t bad either.

PPE is highly recommended

Eyes still watering from the heat of the noodle soup and now elbow deep in crab, our table must make for a pretty picture. Service is generally sparse – it’s not that kind of restaurant – but water is brought over quickly in polystyrene cups.

Regulars at Chongqing will insist that you order the grilled fish. I can’t comment as we didn’t have it, but do I regret leaving the restaurant without trying it? Yes. Not because the portion sizes were in any way lacking – they weren’t – but because this dish has been recommended more times than I can recall. Poor me, I’ll have to go back.

Don’t come to Chongqing if you want your hand holding through the westernised and sugarcoated fried festivities that make up a large chunk of the UK’s answer to ‘Chinese’ cuisine (which in my eyes does very much have its place – on a Saturday night off your knees in front of the telly).

But if delirious levels of spice, a waste-not-want-not approach to offal and proper regional Chinese cooking is what you seek, there are a number of places in the centre of Bristol that will send you on your way with your tongue numb and your belly full. But it’s arguably the unfussy, authentic and distinctive cooking of Great Chongqing that will do it the best. Here’s to it being around for another five years.

Great Chongqing, Park Row, BS1 5LH
greatchongqing.business.site

All photos: Meg Houghton-Gilmour

Read next:

• Tasty To Go, St Augustine’s Parade: ‘A taste and textural rollercoaster’ – restaurant review
• Your Bristol favourites: Chinese takeaways
• New Sichuan restaurant opening

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