🇨🇳 Guangzhou

Guangzhou's food

The saying "the food is in Guangzhou" is an old one. Near the mouth of the Pearl River, where the harvests of sea and hill gather, Cantonese cooking has made its pride the light treatment that keeps the ingredient's own taste. Rather than cover it in strong spice, it bets on freshness and fire through steaming, poaching and blanching. In yum cha, the clarity of a single har gow skin shows the hand; roast meats are spoken of by the tautness of skin and the run of fat. Sweetness has its own separate culture, "tong sui," where set-milk bowls like double-skin milk and ginger milk curd close a meal or an afternoon. Sweetness and freshness over heat, care over decoration — that is the core of Guangzhou's food.

Starting from three areas

The city is traced from three districts of differing character. First, old Xiguan and Shangxiajiu: the arcaded old town of Tao Tao Ju and Lin Heung Lau's yum cha, Yinji's rice rolls, sampan congee and Nanxin's double-skin milk — the core of dim sum and sweet soups. Second, the Beijing Road street: the downtown over its thousand-year road, where beef offal, wonton noodles, roast goose rice, bowl cake and egg waffle — stalls and roasts — are picked a little at a time as you walk. Third, Dongshankou: the quiet district of Republican mansions, where pineapple bun and milk tea, mansion-cafe coffee, ginger milk curd and egg tart are tasted by settling into one place at a time. A yum cha morning, a stall afternoon, a cafe dusk — the three are colour-coded so their dishes do not overlap.

How to read Guangzhou's food

Guangzhou's food reads more clearly by time of day. Morning is yum cha, the day's most important hour, spent picking dim sum over tea in a teahouse; order the baskets one at a time and stack the empties as a signal. Noon rests on roast-meat rice and noodles — choose goose, char siu or poached chicken over white rice. From afternoon into night is the hour of sweet soups and cafes, where double-skin milk, ginger milk curd, milk tea and coffee rest the body. Stall snacks grow from evening on. Every plate is light, restrained in salt and sweetness, and so suits trying many things a little at a time. Sorting the sit-down teahouse from the street stall by the hour of the day is how you walk this city.

Before you go

A few practical guides. For payment, phone QR is widespread and reaches even the stalls, though travellers do well to carry a little cash. Yum cha is safest in the morning, and popular teahouses can mean a long weekend wait. Roast meats are fullest around midday and can sell out late. Cantonese food is generally not spicy, but chilli sauce can be added to beef offal and the like. Summers are humid, so cool yourself with sweet soups or iced milk tea as you walk. All prices and hours in the text are a guide, and a shop's state changes. Real, well-known houses are named, but signboards and locations do shift, so go by the queue and the steam and check on the spot before you enter.