Nanjing’s long-standing food vendors and eateries in downtown neighbourhoods offer a real taste of city and local life. I go back to those places when I can, preferably later in the afternoon to bring something home for a simple supper, and, like many other Nanjingers (or the older ones perhaps), I always get a bag of “shaobing” (烧饼). You must try them if you haven’t, but it is even better to appreciate these humble pastries in some cultural context.
“Bing” apart from being a search engine which you’d use only...
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...
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...
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...