Cantonese cuisine

Perhaps second only to Guangzhou in Guangdong Province, Shenzhen is an ideal place for first timers to try dim sum and classic Cantonese cooking. You can rely on Shenzhen's dim sum restaurants (many of them established chains originating in Guangzhou) to be spotless, well-run, affordable and have English menus, or failing that picture menus with a tick-box ordering system. 

Shenzhen is spoiled for choice when it comes to Cantonese eats. 0ld-school restaurants like Phoenix House, with its seafood tanks by the entrance, tasseled tablecloths and crystal chandeliers, provide the classic Canto experience of long, jovial meals with lots of courses and endless pours of tea. More modern chains, like the excellent Fán Lóu, aren't afraid to break the rules a bit, for example serving dim sum in the evening, tinkering with classic recipes and even adding fusion-type dishes to the menu.

China's most travelled cuisine

Cantonese cooking (粤菜; yuècài) is the most influential of China's eight major regional cuisines. The southern Chinese, particularly the Cantonese, historically spearheaded successive waves of emigration overseas, leaving aromatic constellations of Chinatowns around the world. Consequently, Westerners most often associate this school of cooking with China.

Naturally, eating at the source in Guangdong and Hong Kong is infinitely better than overseas Chinatowns, where dishes have often been tailored and tempered to local palates. Complex cooking methods, an obsession with freshness and the use of a wide range of ingredients typify Cantonese food. The Cantonese astutely believe that good cooking does not require an overabundance of flavoring -- it is the xiān (natural freshness) of the ingredients that marks a truly high-grade dish. Hence the near-obsessive attention paid to the freshness of ingredients in southern cuisine. For haute cuisine, chefs from China's other illustrious food regions acknowledge the superiority of their Cantonese colleagues in making the best of expensive items such as abalone.

China's esteem for Cantonese food is evident in a popular saying: “Be born in Suzhou, live in Hangzhou, eat in Guangzhou and die in Liuzhou.” This phrase indicates that Suzhou was famed for its good-looking people. Hangzhou was a lovely place to live, Guangzhou was the best place to eat, and Liuzhou was famed for the wood of its coffins!

The joy of dim sum

The hallmark Cantonese dish is dim sum (点心; diǎnxin). In Shenzhen, yum cha (literally “drink tea”) -- another name for the dim sum dining experience -- can be enjoyed on any day of the week. Dishes are often served in steamers and are always accompanied by tea. Well-known dim sum dishes include shaomài (open pork dumplings) chashaobao (pork-filled buns), guōtiē (fried dumplings), and chunjuǎn (spring rolls). The extravagantly named fèngzhuǎ (“phoenix claw”) is an ever popular dish of steamed chicken's feet.