红烧肉 hóngshāo ròu red-braised pork

Hongshao rou is known as Mao Zedong's favorite dish. Mao hails from Hunan, and you can tell you're in a Hunan restaurant if his photograph hangs from the wall. The cut of meat is pork belly, the same as bacon. If Americans cut bacon length-wise, the Chinese cut it width-wise, creating large cubes of fatty pork. Usually when foreigners encounter this dish, they eat around the fat, but the Chinese think it's the best part. Shanghai has adopted the dish but made it slightly sweeter.