How Sichuan cuisine conquered the world, from Ming dynasty to McDonald’s sauce that nearly caused a riot
- We think of Sichuan food as numbing and super hot, but the cuisine is much more subtle than that, say chefs and fans
- Dishes such as mapo tofu and Sichuan hotpot are popular all over the world, but two-thirds of Sichuan dishes aren’t fiery
Many may remember the 1998 film Mulan, the tale of a young Chinese girl who pretends to be a man to take her ailing father’s place in the army.
In a joint promotion for the original animated feature, McDonald’s released a condiment called SzeChuan sauce for a limited time.
Hong Kong-born Kevin Pang, who was raised in the United States, remembers it well from his teenage days.
“It tasted very much like American Chinese food, it was too sweet. The texture was very gloopy, very sticky, and I think it was a little bit too out there for an American audience. If you eat chicken nuggets, you have barbecue sauce, you have hot mustard, but you don’t have this vaguely Asian style sauce. It was a novelty,” recalls Pang.
Interest in the sauce soon dissipated and it was forgotten until 2017, when an episode of cult adult cartoon show Rick and Morty – which featured a mad scientist and his adventures with his grandson – mentioned the SzeChuan sauce.
“The show began with Rick in this hallucinogenic dream sequence. He was dreaming that he was at McDonald’s to taste the SzeChuan sauce before it went out of circulation,” explains Pang. “And so for the remainder of the show, it became this running joke, that all he wanted was to bring back the SzeChuan sauce.”
