“No duck leaves Nanjing alive.”
Statistics show that the city consumes over 100 million ducks each year. Everyone has heard of Nanjing ducks, but they are too often misunderstood. Visitors and tourists to Confucius Temple feel obliged to order salted duck from the restaurants nearby. They would find the duck unpleasantly salty and no more authentic than what they have already had in their home cities. Nevertheless, they would bring back some vacuum-packed duck as souvenir gifts because they find nothing else worth buying in the vicinity.
That, of course, is...
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...
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...
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...