Over the past year or two, some of the fanciest coffee shops, bars and bistros have mushroomed around the intersection of Wangfu Da Jie (王府大街) and Nantai Xiang (南台巷). The Sauce, Wine Thieves, Bitter Brew, Southern Trip, Staff Only, Cherry Bomb, Y&T… the list could go longer. If you have been following The Nanjinger, chances are that many of the names sound familiar to you. But have you ever walked around that area early in the morning, like 08:00?  “What for?”, You might wonder. The time is indeed too early...

We are not expecting Nanjing to have the finest restaurants when Shanghai is only 1.5 hours away by train. That said, when it comes to Huaiyang cuisine, one of the eight major culinary traditions in China, Nanjing is certainly blessed with some top-tier restaurants in the field. Huaiyang (淮扬) cuisine in its broader sense is also known as Jiangsu cuisine (Sucai 苏菜). Strictly speaking, however, it refers to the culinary tradition that originated from Yangzhou, a city about 90 kilometres from us which used to be the Manhattan of imperial...

Have you ever thought of visiting the Confucius Temple (Fuzimiao; 夫子庙) area and sampling some local cuisine there? If so, you might have already been warned off by your Nanjing friends.  It is puzzling because the area indeed had a reputation for delicious food. These days, however, too many restaurants and shops in that area offer nothing but overpriced, poor-quality food, with the knowledge that most of their customers are tourists who will not come back anyway. One may even argue that the locals will not eat anything in the...

There is a Chinese saying that goes, “Nothing feels better than lying down; nothing tastes better than dumplings.” The problem is, not all dumplings are created equal. Some of them taste absolutely better than others. This holds true even if we suppose they all have the same fillings, because the wrappers and the way they are cooked already make considerable differences. In my view, the better types of dumplings are fried dumplings. That should not sound too controversial, because, let’s face it, oil is the secret to deliciousness. Yet again, fried dumplings...