What to Eat in China, Region by Region

There is no such thing as Chinese food. There are at least eight major regional cuisines, they disagree with each other about everything from the correct amount of sugar to whether wheat or rice is the basis of a meal, and a traveller who eats across three provinces in two weeks eats more variously

This is the eating brief we send our travellers, written by region, because that is how the country works.

Sichuan, in Chengdu

The cuisine everyone thinks they know and almost nobody has actually eaten outside China. Sichuan food is not simply hot. It is built on a flavour the Chinese call mala, which is the numbing tingle of the Sichuan peppercorn set against chilli heat, and the good version leaves your lips buzzing rather than your mouth burning.

Order: mapo tofu, which is the dish to judge a kitchen by. Twice-cooked pork. Dan dan noodles, which are a small bowl and a snack rather than a meal. Fuqi feipian, cold sliced beef in chilli oil. Zhong dumplings in sweet soy and garlic. Kung pao chicken, which is a real dish badly treated abroad.

Hotpot is the social meal, a simmering cauldron in the middle of the table into which you cook your own thin-sliced everything. Ask for the split pot, half spiced and half clear broth, on your first night. Nobody will judge you and the clear side is genuinely good.

Chengdu is also the tea house city. People’s Park in the afternoon, a bamboo chair, a lidded cup of jasmine and an ear cleaner working the tables is the most Chengdu hour available.

Shaanxi, in Xi’an

Wheat country, and the food shows it. This is the beginning of the Silk Road and the cooking carries Central Asia in it.

Order: roujiamo, chopped braised pork or lamb in a flatbread, which predates the sandwich by a very long time. Biang biang noodles, hand-pulled into belts as wide as your thumb. Liangpi, cold wheat noodles in vinegar and chilli. Yangrou paomo, a mutton soup you crumble your own flat bread into, which is the local ritual meal.

Eat all of it in the Muslim Quarter, which is the best street eating in northern China and which is a functioning Hui neighbourhood rather than a tourist theatre. Go in the evening, walk the side lanes rather than the main one, and finish with a persimmon cake.

Beijing and the north

Imperial food and street food, with little in the middle.

Peking duck is the set piece and it is worth doing properly once: fruitwood-fired oven, carving at the table, the skin dipped in sugar, the pancakes, and the duck soup at the end. We book an older house rather than the one on the tourist list.

The other Beijing meal is breakfast on the street: youtiao, fried dough sticks, with hot soy milk. Jianbing, a thin crepe folded on a griddle with egg, herbs and a cracker inside. Baozi, steamed buns, from a bamboo tower at a hole in the wall. There is also douzhi, a fermented mung bean drink that tastes exactly as challenging as that sounds, and we will offer it to you once and not insist.

Northern dumplings, jiaozi, are boiled rather than steamed and are a meal rather than a starter.

Jiangnan, in Shanghai, Suzhou and Hangzhou

The eastern coast cooks sweeter, gentler and with more river fish than anywhere else, and northerners complain about the sugar the way southerners complain about the salt.

Order: xiaolongbao, the soup dumplings, which are a Shanghai thing and are eaten by biting a hole, drinking the soup and then eating the dumpling. Red-braised pork, dark, glossy and sweet. Drunken chicken, cold and steeped in rice wine. River shrimp with Longjing tea leaves in Hangzhou. Suzhou noodles in a clear breakfast broth, which the city takes extremely seriously.

Hangzhou is also the tea. The Longjing villages on the hills west of West Lake are a morning: the terraces, the picking, the hand-firing in a hot wok, and a tasting that is a lesson rather than a shop.

Yunnan and the southwest

The most surprising food in China, because it does not taste Chinese in the way the other seven do. Yunnan borders Burma, Laos and Vietnam and eats accordingly: sour, herbal, mushroom-heavy and full of things that grow wild.

Order: crossing the bridge noodles, a bowl of very hot broth into which everything is cooked at the table. Wild mushrooms in season, which in summer is a religion here. Er kuai, pressed rice cakes grilled on the street. Dai food in the far south, with lemongrass, mint and pounded chilli. Goat cheese, grilled, which exists almost nowhere else in China. Pu’er tea, aged and pressed into cakes, from the mountains near the Burmese border.

Guizhou next door does sour rather than spicy, with fermented tomato fish soup as the signature, and it is one of the least known cuisines in the country.

Cantonese, in the south

The cooking most of the world met first, and it is a different animal at home. Steaming, quick stir-frying, the freshest possible ingredients and a suspicion of heavy sauces.

Dim sum is a morning meal, not an evening one. Order har gow, shrimp dumplings with translucent skin, siu mai, char siu bao, rice noodle rolls and an egg tart at the end, and drink tea throughout. Roast goose and char siu from a shop with the birds hanging in the window are two of the best cheap lunches in Asia.

Xinjiang, in the northwest

Lamb, cumin, hand-pulled noodles and bread baked on the wall of a clay oven. Laghman noodles, polo rice pilaf, samsa baked lamb pastries, and skewers cooked over charcoal on a street corner. You will find Xinjiang restaurants in every major Chinese city and they are frequently the best cheap meal in town.

How to order, practically

Meals are shared. Dishes arrive as they are cooked, land in the middle, and everyone eats from all of them with rice on the side. Order roughly one dish per person plus one, with a balance of a meat, a vegetable, something starchy and something cold.

Menus increasingly live behind a QR code on the table. That means your phone needs to work and your payment app needs to be linked before you fly, which is covered in paying for things in China. Your translation app will read the screen.

Point at what other tables are eating. It is not rude, it is normal, and it is the single most effective ordering strategy in the country.

Say your spice level early. Bu la means not spicy, wei la means a little. In Sichuan and Hunan, “a little” is still a real amount.

Tea is the drink. Beer is cold and light and goes with everything spicy. Baijiu, the grain spirit, is strong and is offered as hospitality, and it is completely acceptable to take a sip and stop.

Breakfast is savoury. Congee, buns, noodles, soy milk. Hotel buffets serve a Western version and it is the least interesting meal available to you.

What is overrated, honestly

The snack streets. Wangfujing in Beijing and its equivalents elsewhere sell scorpions on sticks to domestic tourists taking photographs. They are not local food and nobody in Beijing eats them.

Peking duck at the famous chain branches. The duck is fine. The room is a coach park. A smaller, older house is better in every respect and costs less.

Hotel breakfast. In a country with the best street breakfast in Asia, sitting in a basement eating scrambled eggs is a waste of a morning.

Anything sold on the basis of rarity. We do not book restaurants trading on endangered or exotic animals, and neither should you.

The idea that Sichuan food will destroy you. It will not. The heat is real and it is one flavour among many, and the region also produces some of the gentlest cold dishes and clearest broths in the country.

What it costs

Food is the cheapest good thing in China. A street breakfast is a dollar or two, a bowl of noodles is $2 to $5, dinner for two at a proper Sichuan restaurant with six dishes and beer is $25 to $45, and a serious contemporary meal in Shanghai is $60 to $150 a head. A realistic daily budget for eating widely and well is $25 to $40. The full picture is in what two weeks in China costs.

Plan this trip

Tell us where you want to eat and we will build the route around the table rather than around the monuments. Free first outline, no obligation.

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Frequently asked questions

Can vegetarians eat well in China?

Yes, with care. Buddhist restaurants, often attached to temples, are excellent and entirely vegetarian, and Wenshu monastery in Chengdu serves one of the best lunches in the city. Elsewhere, dishes described as vegetable may contain pork stock or dried shrimp, so we brief restaurants in advance on the days it matters.

Is street food safe?

Generally yes, at busy stalls with high turnover, which is most of them. We take the same approach we take everywhere in Asia: eat where there is a queue of local people and where the cooking happens in front of you.

Do we need a food guide?

For one morning in Chengdu and one evening in Xi’an, a guide is worth more than a week of guesswork, because they order the dishes you would never have found on a picture menu. The rest of your eating is yours to do. Our food and culture route is built around exactly those days.

Will children eat this food?

Most of it, easily. Dumplings, noodles, rice, roast duck, buns and clear soups are the backbone of Chinese eating and children take to them. More in China with children.

What about allergies?

Workable, with the requirement written in Chinese and given to the restaurant in advance. Peanut oil and sesame are widespread, and our partner teams brief kitchens directly on the days we book. —

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What to eat in China, region by region