CANTONESE CUISINE                                             

   Cantonese cuisine is one of the four main cuisines in China. It has absorbed the strong points of other cuisine, diverse and delicate in material. The choice materials cover a wide range and the seasonings are varied and well coordinated. The dishes are prepared carefully and exquisitely. Quick-fried or stewed, they turn out to be fresh, crisp, tender, slippery and not salty with all flavors and tastes. They vary with the change of seasons, conforming to modern dietetics.

    Guangzhou's catering industry ranks first in scale in the country. According to statistics, there are about ten thousand catering enterprises and restaurants with some 500,000 seats, of which quite a number are old name restaurants with a history of more than 100 years or newly-built famous ones. There are numerous well-known dishes, pastries, snacks and local-flavor food. Dishes renowned at home and abroad are the Complete Dinner of Manchu and Mandarin Di shes of Guangzhou Restaurant, The Refreshments Meal of Panxi Restaurant, Fish with Pine Nuts of Beiyuan Restaurant, Chaozhou Dishes of Nanyuan Restaurant, moon cake with lotus seed paste of Lian Xiang Lou, Tao Tao Ju Restaurant, stewed shark's fin in brown sauce of Da Sanyuan Restaurant, Jinpai roast suckling pig of Datong Restaurant, Dongjiang Kejia dishes of Dingjiang Restaurant, Shanshui Shahe rice starch noodles of Shahe Restaurant, Qingping chicken of Qingping Restaurant, Beijing and Tianjin dishes of Huabei (North China) Restaurant, Muslim dishes of Huimin Restaurant and snake dishes of Man, The Snake King's Restaurant, etc. Most restaurants in Guangzhou provide three teas, two meals and one night snack. Combining eating with entertainment, they usually open from 5:00 a.m. to 12:00 at night. Some even provide 24-hour service.

    People say that you are not counted as having been to Guangzhou if you haven't tasted the well-known dishes and pastries here.