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...

Situated on the edge of the busy business district in Jiangning, this branch of a chain of restaurants stands quietly. I've never been too interested in chains, because I don't think they guarantee the quality of the food and so I almost walked on by, but its slogan made stop in my tracks. "Representative brand of Jiangsu Huaiyang cuisine" I pride myself on being a person who has grown up eating Huaiyang cuisine for more than 20 years, so I was really curious about the level of this so-called "representative brand"....

When it comes to a halal diet, people will always think of a series of delicacies made from beef and mutton. However, there is such a restaurant that uses the most common fish, duck, prawns and eggs in Nanjing as ingredients, applying new ideas and a unique style to make dishes with both halal flavours and Jiangnan characteristics, which has won the recognition of many diners.  Welcome to Ma Xiangxing, an icon of the city's cuisine in the minds of Nanjingers for over 100 years. When I strolled along Yunnan Bei...

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...