Restaurants
Suzhou: An Introduction of Gourmet Food
Generally, there are four major cuisines in China, namely, the Jiangsu, Shandong, Guangdong and Sichuan cuisines, tasting different to each other. There is an old saying that "sour in east, hot in west, sweet in south and salty in north", and thus the Jiangsu cuisine belongs to the "sweet in south".
The foods of Jiangsu style is of great variety. After several thousand years of development, the Suzhou foods can be basically divided into twelve categories, i.e. Jiangsu style dishes, Jiangsu style braised food, Jiangsu style pastry, Jiangsu style cakes, Jiangsu style candy, Jiangsu style confiture, Suzhou snacks and Suzhou rice-cake etc.
Famous Suzhou dishes mainly include: shrimps in Biluochun Tea sauce and Salted Bamboo Shoot in spring, Chicken in Watermelon and Plain Fried Shrimps in summer, Barb Liver Soup and Hairy Crab in autumn, Stewed Chicken in Marmite and Herring Tail in winter, etc.
Suzhou snacks are also famous worldwide. For instance, Sweet Dried Bean Curd, Pine-nut Candy, Rose Melon Seeds, Shrimp-roe Soy Sauce, Sesame Seed Cake with Jujube Paste and Lard New Year cake are all gourmet winning universal praise and worth having a taste.
Gourmet Food Recommendation of Suzhou Ancient Zone
The food streets in Suzhou ancient zone are mainly distributed along the Guanqian Street district and Panmen district; for the former, there are also located the famous TaiJian lane and Bifengfang lane, while the Shiquan Street and Fenghuang Street for the latter. In addition, there are also many famous food streets between the two districts such as Xueshi Street, Ganjiang Road and Shilujinmenshangshi Food Street.
A lot of traditional snack shops and century-old shops gather at these traditional food streets. You can bump into many famous stores like Lu Changxing Noodle Shop, Huang Tianyuan Rice-cake House, Cai Yaozhai, Luyang Wonton, Songhelou Restaurant and Zhu Hongxing, to enjoy a gourmet feast.
What is more, there are also many western-style foods and other foods from all over the world. The business street in new area is a Japanese cuisine street, while the Xindu Square in Industrial park is of European and American Style Food Streets. All these exotic foods spring up in the downtown district outside the ancient zone, together with the Jiangsu style cate to glut you with delicacies.
Gourmet Food Recommendation of Wuzhong District
1. Mutton in the Town of Books in Suzhou Wuzhong District
The mutton in the Town of Books in Suzhou Wuzhong district is well known all over the country. Mutton there is hybrid variety of East Caucasian Tur and mutton sheep imported form Australia, tasting extremely fresh and no smell of mutton whether braising or boiling.
The institutions in the town asses the Star rating of mutton restaurants with Bronze medal embedded in front of the door. The highest level of 3-star occupies seven to eight restaurants, with the prices almost the same but slight higher than non 3-star. It is said that seven persons with RMB 200 Yuan can have a nice dinner.
Restaurants Recommended: The Old Qingtai Mutton Restaurant is situated in the busy area of Town of Books, the first one under the big sign hung on the Mutton Food City gate of Town of Books. It is said that the Old Qingtai has a history of more than 100 years, whose owner now is the fifth generation. The consumption in Old Qingtai is charged according to the table, from RMB 148, 188 up to 588.
Transit Routes: To achieve the restaurant, you can take the midibus from bus station of Wuzhong District to Guangfu town, or take coach of Guangfuchuan Food Street or Zhenhu Town at Suzhou south bus station. In fact, the buses you can take is plenty enough every ten minutes or less, which all pass through the Town of Book, with a traveling time of 20 minutes approximately and fare of RMB 3 Yuan.
Eat Crabs in Suzhou
It is an emerging popularity to eat crab in Suzhou in the season when crabs come into the market. Various species of crabs can be selected: in addition to the Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs, there are also cheap and good Taihu Lake crabs
The main locations to eat crab are Weiting Town in Suzhou Industrial Park, Street of Taihu Lake Dinning Ship in Ancient Town of Guangfu, or East Mountain and West Mountain.
1. Weiting Town: Being the lake side town with the largest water area, it is the major production areas of authentic Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs. A new catering street is completed there recently, with hotels and restaurants of different levels standing in great numbers.
The Weiting crabs appear on the market centrally from later September to December every year, weighing 500g for three crabs generally while 250g for the bigger one and 500g for the biggest one.
Transit routes: You can drive along the Shanghai-Nanjing Expressway for 65km to the Suzhou industrial park, keeping forward from the exit for 2km, so as to get the Weiting Town, within one hour's drive from Shanghai.
2. Street of Taihu Lake Dining Ship. It is the place for happy farmhouse, existing almost 15 dinning ships with the basic food of Taihu Lake crabs. As for the weight of crabs, it is not suggest ordering the big crab with a weight of 3-4 tales rather than 4-5 taels due to the bigger one grows rapidly and leads to its meat relatively soft. Generally, about 3 tales for a female crab and 3.5 tales for male one is available, pricing at RMB 25 Yuan which is quite reasonable.