In a country where you can eat so well for cheaply, you may wonder why you’d ever want to pay much for a meal. In fact, until quite recently, I considered it a little crazy to pay more than the absolute minimum to fill one’s belly; the cheapest food is the best food here, I thought, so why should anyone spend any more of their hard-earned cash than they have to?

But though I still love the inexpensive basics of Sichuan cuisine (Mapo Tofu, Gong Bao Chicken, Fish Fragrant Aubergine etc), my attitude towards fine dining in China has recently undergone a bit of sea change. Perhaps it's because having eaten the classics so many times, I now appreciate the variety of dishes on offer at more expensive restaurants; or perhaps because now, being able to cook these dishes myself, I want something else when I go out – whatever the reason, I am currently on a mission to try out some of Chengdu’s more fancy restaurants, and have recently been to two excellent ones.

The first was at Rong Jin Yi Hao, where Cam and I went for our friend Clare’s birthday. Situated next to the river in the west of town, the restaurant is only 1 floor tall, very unusual for Chengdu, and even more unusual, made almost entirely out of glass. As you enter from the main road, it’s a bit like stepping into a rather glamorous greenhouse: lush fabrics drape from the ceiling, ancient-style furniture lines the walls, and customers lounge on plush purple sofas.

But enough about the decorations, on to the food! Almost everything we ate at Rong Jin Yi Hao I had never had before – particularly memorable were the ducks tongues, served with peanuts and deep-fried quails eggs…

…and these tangy, crunchy Strange-Flavour Broad Beans.

And though I wasn't exactly full when I left Rong Jin Yi Hao (a unfortunate side-effect of fancy restaurants, where rice is almost never served unless you ask for it), I would certainly recommend it for it's unusual and modern interpretations of Sichuan cuisine.

The second fancy restaurant I went to recently was Baguo Buyi. Established in 1996, Baguo Buyi has built a reputation for serving high-quality, authentic Sichuan food, and with 25 restaurants across China, is one of the most famous Sichuanese restaurant chains in the country. The Chengdu flagship branch, originally right in the downtowm, has changed location several times but is now settled in a huge, purpose-built complex (also housing a boutique hotel and tea-house) in the south near the airport expressway.

If all this makes Baguo Buyi sound a little forbidding though, think again – the staff are incredibly friendly, and the interior, though not exactly cozy, is beautiful. The mutli-story building, decorated in a grand-cum-rustic style, contains private dining rooms of various levels of sumptuousness, and tables for all group sizes in the public dining room. The best tables here have a view of the stage for the nightly face-changing, dancing and fire-breathing show, which, although a little noisy, was fun and of a pretty professional quality (the show is free for diners, lasts about 20 minutes, and starts at about 7pm).

Given all that I'd heard about Baguo Buyi my expectations were naturally high, but on the two occasions I ate there it didn't disappoint. Pick of the cold dishes was rabbit with green peppers, the meat strips lying on a bed of wood-ear mushrooms and draped in an aromatic sesame oil dressing swimming in green peppers;

and the pea jelly, the spicy sauce nicely offset by the crushed peanuts.

The hot dishes weren't perhaps quite a good as the cold – the chicken with chillies was, I thought, stingy on the meat and overpriced to boot (though my American co-diners loved the addition of fried potatoes). But the disappointment of that dish was more than made up for by two gorgeous pork dishes: belly pork with green beans was totally sublime, the chunks of meat meltingly soft, the beans cooked yet crunchy, the sauce satisfyingly sweet; and the twice-cooked pork with bread rolls was a nice twist on an old favourite.

So, would I want to eat at Rong Jin Yi Hao and Baguo Buyi everyday of the week? Of course not - even if money were not an issue the food at these restaurants is far too rich for everyday eating. Nonetheless, I will be sure to go them both again - both when I want to linger over my meal, and enjoy some very high quality Sichuan cuisine.

Baguo Buyi 巴国布衣
55 Shenxianshu Nan Lu (the branch I ate at)
神仙树南路55号
Tel: 028-85551168
Also another branch in Shuang Nan:
8 Guang Fu Qiao Bei Jie
广福桥北街8号附19号
Tel: 028-85095777

Rong Jin Yi Hao 容锦一号
Song Xian Qiao Tou 送仙桥头
Tel: 028-87337726

(Some parts of this post first appeared in Chengdoo Citylife Magazine, Issue 23)

For our respective birthdays, Cam and I have a tradition of letting each other organise the day – so when it's his I organise something, and vice versa. Because this year my birthday (February 1st) was while I was in Laos and Cam was in China, we decided to have a kind of 'fake' birthday for me after I'd got back to Chengdu. This we did yesterday, and my wonderful, clever boyfriend made it so that it was largely food-themed.

The day started with Part 1 of Cam's presents to me: a beautiful non-stick wok – perfect for pancakes.

After that, we headed out into the sunshine for a wander around Chengdu's oldest church,

ate a little snack – chilli-laden liangfen (bean-starch jelly) and crunchy, heart-shaped broad beans,

and mooched around in the lovely tea-house opposite the church. This is the tea I had,

and here is a glimpse of Cam's.

After such an, err, tiring afternoon, I was quite keen on eating out for dinner, but for some reason Cam was fixated on making jiaozi(dumplings) and soup for dinner. Being the simple soul that I am, I didn't suspect a thing, and so it was a wonderful surprise to come home and find Presents Part 2: a 3-layer bamboo steamer set, a long-handled ladle, and a fancy soup server that they have at restaurants that keeps your soup warm while you eat.

By this point I'd been sent into paroxysms of delight, as anyone who knows me can well imagine; all that was left to make the day complete was to cook a fantastic meal with all these new toys: a simple but refreshing mushroom soup, and not one but two different types of dumplings.

Now all I need to do is think of something similarly wonderful to do for Cam's birthday...