Li's Kitchen (Family Li Imperial Cuisine)

The Kitchen

Family Li Imperial Cuisine opened on Level 6 of the Metropolitan Oriental Plaza in Jiefangbei on 10 January 2025, the brand's first move into southwest China after Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, Taipei and Paris. The lineage is the whole story. Founder Li Shanlin built the restaurant on recipes from his grandfather Li Shunqing, who ran an imperial kitchen for Empress Dowager Cixi; the inheritor today is Li Xiaolin. Family Li's Tokyo branch held two Michelin stars, and the brand bills itself as the world's first two-Michelin-star Chinese restaurant. Michelin does not publish a Chongqing guide, so read the slogan as pedigree, not a local rating.

You do not order. The kitchen serves a fixed sequence — eight to ten starters, five to seven mains, a few desserts — and that is the meal. The cooking is deliberately spare: a short list of seasonings, mostly soy, Huangjiu and sugar, and an obsession with single, precisely aged ingredients. The signature is braised special-grade dried abalone. Clear imperial broths and single-ingredient steamed courses fill out a menu built on Qing-court banquet logic. In a city defined by chilli and Sichuan pepper, this is the quiet opposite, and that contrast is the point.

The Room

It is formal in a way little else in Chongqing is. White tablecloths, a main hall of around sixty seats, and private rooms for eight to twelve that are the reason most serious tables book here. Service moves at a slow, ceremonial pace, and a full dinner runs close to three hours. The dress code is stricter than the city norm: collared shirts, closed-toe shoes, a jacket never out of place. Set menus run from roughly ¥300 to ¥2,000 a head, more for the full imperial sequence, with a table of ten landing above ¥3,000 once service is added. Come for the occasion and the lineage, not for a quick meal.