Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan province, is well-known for its beauty, scenery and food. If you want to taste the most authentic food in Chengdu, you might want to try the "fly restaurants', small restaurants that serve delicious and cheap food in a local dialect. The media in Chengdu recently issued a top 50 list of the city's "fly restaurants." Reporters from China Daily visited one of them the other day.

The little restaurant is located in a shabby alley of an old community, which is famous for its signature dish of rabbit meat hot pot. The restaurant is open-air and crowded with nearly 30 small tables. Hot as the weather was, dozens of hot pot lovers came, sitting on short plastic stools around the table.

Despite the heat, hot pot lovers sit on small plastic stools around the table.

"Small tables, short stools, gas canisters, red-brick buildings and clothes hanging on the line above your head, those are all old memories of Chengdu," commented Kamino, a user of Sina's microblog.

Peng Zhiqiong, 47, is the owner of the restaurant. "Sorry to have kept you waiting. I'm too busy," Peng apologized to the reporters, as she quickly calculated the bill.

Peng apologizes to the reporters as she uses her calculator to tally the bill.

Peng used to work in the canteen of Chengdu's railway bureau. She started the restaurant in 1995 after losing her job.

A 22-year-old girl surnamed Shi has been eating in the restaurant since she was five or six. "My mom used to take me here, and now I take my friends here," she said. Although she has moved out of the community, Shi still comes to the restaurant two or three times a month.

Wang, 30, spent over an hour riding a bus to the restaurant with her husband and friends. "It's a great joy to come here, eating, sweating, and taking a shower back home," Wang said. "You would never taste such original flavor in an air-conditioned room."

The restaurant's signature dish — rabbit meat hot pot.

An elderly lady surnamed Sun has been a patron of the restaurant since it opened. Now she has become a friend of the owner. "The food here is so delicious, fresh and cheap," she said, "especially the rabbit kidney. It couldn't be better."

Serving fresh, tasty and cheap food, the restaurant has become famous and attracts people around the city. "Look at that table of eaters," said Sun, "they heard about it from microblogs."

The community where the restaurant is located is so old that many residents have moved out. According to the city's renewal plan, the community is going to be pulled down before long. However, none of the eaters seemed concerned, as they were busy enjoying the food.