Gourmet festival to present best hangzhou local cuisine

Hangzhou’s autumn is best known for its floral fragrance, fallen leaves and yellowing ginkgo trees as well as its gourmet foods. The 2017 18th China (Hangzhou) Gourmet Festival will take place on Oct. 27-29 at Hangzhou West City Square, where visitors can taste foods by 30 local restaurants and food companies, including big-wok and braised dishes by New Tin’s, four most well-known dishes by Xinkaiyuan Hotel, and mooncakes by Wuweihe. 

The first gourmet food festival was held in 2000 to promote local cuisines. This year’s festival themes “enjoy unique taste of local food in Hangzhou.” The big “banquet” festival will stage exhibitions for local dim sums, gourmet foods, international gourmet foods, local snacks as well as Hangzhou cuisine lectures and tea ceremony performances. This year’s festival picked the most authentic local foods selected by chefs and organizers of the event. 

For instance, September Life and Wuweihe will bring their best-selling mooncakes. A manager with September Life said the fillings of mooncakes include meat, pickles, red beans, and puffs. Visitors can also see how mooncakes are made at the exhibition. 

Time-honoured restaurants and snack shops including Cuiqinzhai, Siweiwang and tofu products from Fuyang’s Dongwu Mountain will also set up stalls at the exhibition. 

Hangzhou cuisine is famous for its mild flavours and special aroma due to its choice ingredients. Famous upscale restaurants include Louwailou and Zhiweiguan. Other cafes that are popular with visitors include Xintingji, Weizhuang, Wangyuanxing, Guanjianglou, Haoshitang, Zunkeren and 70’s Restaurant. Xintingji offers its top specialty, family meal-style big wok dish this year. 

Special chicken feet, traditional crisp fish, secret recipe quail and brown sugar rice cake are the best selling dishes of Xinkaiyuan Hotel. Quail dishes are pretty nostalgic to locals in the city, as deep fried quails were extremely popular. To prepare secret recipe quails, the chefs need to dip quails in soups with fennel, cinnamon and soy sauce after deep fry. 

Mr. Ma, who has been operating Haoshitang for a while, is definitely a popular chef among eaters in the city for his cooking of delicious chicken feet. Traditional recipe chicken feet and spicy chicken feet are sold CNY 4 each. Along with Chinese sausage and sauced meat, they can be very good dishes for drinking wines. 

If local dishes are not enough for visitors, they will also be provided with foods from other countries and regions, such as those by Grape Mama, Thailand Coconut, Jinxiansheng Sushi Bar, HSH Steak House and The Kebab House Swedish dishes.