Shunde — Where Cantonese Cooking Comes From

If you have eaten Cantonese food anywhere in the world, there is a decent chance the tradition behind it runs through Shunde — a district of Foshan in the Pearl River delta, historically the source of a disproportionate share of the region’s professional chefs, and named a UNESCO City of Gastronomy.

It is the best place to eat in Guangdong, in a province where that is a serious claim.

The philosophy

Cantonese cooking at this level is defined by what it doesn’t do. The aim is xian (鲜) — the clean, sweet freshness of an ingredient at its peak — and the technique exists to protect it rather than transform it.

Which means: a fish out of the pond that morning, steamed whole for exactly long enough, with ginger, scallion, a spoon of hot oil and a little soy. That’s the whole dish. Getting it right requires an excellent fish and precise timing, and hides nothing.

Shunde is in the delta, criss-crossed by fish ponds and channels, so the raw material is freshwater fish, river prawn, poultry and vegetables — and the local specialisation in pond aquaculture goes back centuries.

What to order

Yusheng (鱼生) — raw fish. Sliced paper-thin from a locally raised carp, served with a plate of a dozen shredded condiments — ginger, shallot, chilli, peanut, taro crisp, lime leaf — which you mix yourself. Nothing like sashimi and, done properly here, better.

Steamed river fish, as above. Order it and watch how little is done to it.

Stir-fried milk (炒牛奶) — buffalo milk set into a soft curd with egg white and quickly stir-fried. A Shunde invention and a genuinely strange, excellent thing.

Double-skin milk (双皮奶) — steamed milk custard with two set skins. The dessert the district is famous for; eat it warm.

Rice rolls (肠粉) — rice sheets steamed to order and rolled around prawn, beef or greens, sauced with sweet soy. The Shunde version is thinner than most.

Congee-poached fish, pan-fried radish cake, fresh chrysanthemum dishes in autumn, and morning tea — zaocha — which here is a two-hour institution.

Guangdong’s dessert tradition, which is more developed than most people expect

How to eat here

Go for morning tea. Between roughly 7 and 11, and treat it as the day’s main event rather than breakfast.

Eat where the fish tanks are. The restaurants worth your time have live stock visible, and you choose from it.

Go to the villages. Shunde’s best food is often in single-village restaurants rather than in the district centre, and this is where a hired car or a willing taxi driver earns its keep.

Don’t over-order. Four dishes for two people is plenty, and the restraint of the cooking rewards paying attention to each one.

The dragon boats

Shunde’s other cultural export is dragon boat racing, which in the delta is a serious competitive tradition rather than a festival novelty. Around the Dragon Boat Festival (fifth day of the fifth lunar month, usually June), village teams race on the canals, drums setting the stroke rate, with the banks packed.

And zongzi — glutinous rice steamed in bamboo leaf, filled with pork, bean or sweet paste — made at home in quantity in the run-up.

Practical notes

Getting there: Foshan is joined to Guangzhou by metro; Shunde has its own high-speed rail station. Half an hour from Guangzhou, an hour from Shenzhen.

When: any time. Autumn and winter are the pleasant seasons; hairy crab and chrysanthemum are autumn specialities.

Where to sleep: stay in Shunde rather than commuting from Guangzhou, so you can do morning tea properly.

Nearby: Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Macau and Taishan — all inside the same delta.