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When Trump and Xi sit down to a lavish state banquet in Beijing tonight, one Chinese cuisine is likely to feature on the menu: Huaiyang food, from the region surrounding Shanghai, known for its mild and subtle flavours, refined knife-work and emphasis on seasonal dishes.
Some iconic Huaiyang dishes include tender, springy “lion’s head” pork meatballs, Yangzhou fried rice, “squirrel fish” deep-fried in a sweet-and-sour sauce, and “wensi tofu” – a block of tofu sliced into thousands of fine strands.
The cuisine features ingredients native to the Yangtze River basin, such as freshwater fish, eel, and bamboo shoots, with minimal seasoning to highlight their freshness.
“It’s great for banquets because it’s lighter than the food of Shandong in China’s north, not spicy like the foods of the south-west (like Sichuanese), and more approachable and less reliant on exotic ingredients than Cantonese, the big cuisine of the south,” said Christopher St Cavish, a food writer based in Shanghai.
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