Xuan'en Grilled and Braised Whole Fish 宣恩烤活鱼
Xuan'en Grilled and Braised Whole Fish is featured among the local specialties of Hubei.
Xuan'en Grilled and Braised Whole Fish (宣恩烤活鱼) is a fish dish from Xuan'en County (宣恩县) in the Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture (恩施土家族苗族自治州) of Hubei. Its Chinese name means "grilled live fish", and in Xuan'en it is sold at night-market stalls.
How it is made
The Enshi Daily, in a July 2024 report carried by the Enshi prefecture government, says cooks use carp (鲤鱼), grass carp (草鱼) and similar fish, and that the dish is known for its "先烤后煮" (grill first, then boil) method with a house seasoning. At the stalls the grilled fish is served with a poured sauce of pickled chillies and fermented black beans (豆豉).
Flavour and texture
The paper says the house seasoning gives the grilled-then-boiled fish a range of flavours, among them pickled chilli (泡椒), numbing-hot (麻辣), fragrant-hot (香辣), pepper-aroma (椒香) and fermented black bean.
How it is eaten
Xuan'en County has been building a night-time economy zone, and the Enshi Daily names its grilled live fish street (烤活鱼特色街区) as the highlight, drawing visitors from near and far. The paper describes the stalls at their busiest as night falls, with a server calling out a table number as a grilled fish is brought over, and says the dish has become better known as the county promotes it.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-25. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.