Guilin cuisine is a combination of Cantonese and Hunanese styles, but with more use of fish and spicies and often prepared using stir-frying or steaming. Restaurants often assume westerners do not like spicy food and will make your food bland as hell if you do not insist otherwise. Even then there is a chance they will not believe you.
Guilin has some distinct local ingredients used in a number of dishes.
Chilli Paste is a sauce used for local dishes and also sold to other parts of China and abroad. It is made from chilli, lobster, garlic and Sanhua Wine.
Fermented Beancurd has been made in Guilin for more than 300 years and is known to have a unique taste.
Fruits. Guilin is renowned for its fruit, especially shatian pomelo, arhat fruit and gingkgo
As many other Chinese cities, Guilin has its own snacks.
Horse hoof cake (Matigao) is a local snack. It is a crumbly cake stuffed with red beans filling.
Rice with Mung Bean Paste is made from steamed rice filled with mung bean paste or other. Often eaten for breakfast.
Sweet tofu infused with a certain flower is another delicious breakfast item. Look for roadside vendors adding orange-coloured liquid to a steaming hot bag of tofu, which you then drink with a straw.
Water Chestnut Cake made from rice flour, brown sugar, water chestnut powder and sesame powder.
A number of Guilin dishes are unique to the city or are especially wellknown here.
Daxu Clear Water Fish is a specialty form the ancient city of Daxu. The fish is cooked with salt and ginger.
Duck Wrapped in Lotus Leaf made from duck, dry lotus leaf, meat, bamboo shoots, ham, mushrooms, beans, shrimp and spices.
Fengli steamed, dried and fried rice paste with ham, celery, cauliflower or green garlic.
Nun Vegetarian Noodles this is a noodle soup boiled with soybean sprouts, mushrooms and bamboo shoots and served with . The soup is golden in color, sweet in taste, and has a mouth-watering smell. The noodles are first boiled and then put into bowls where the soup is added. It is served with Guilin Fermented Tofu, scrambled eggs, vegetarian ham, gluten flour and some spices. The fresh-cooked dish is very tasty, and the smell and color are pleasant as well. The Crescent Moon Building in Seven Star Park enjoys a great reputation for its Nun Noodles.
Old Duck Stewed with Gingko made from the famous Guilin gingko, duck and ham stewed in a steamer.
Rice Noodles (Mifen) is a local delicacy, also available as stir-fried (Chaofen). This is served everywhere, but try to avoid the joints near the train station. Traditionally the noodle and the topping is first eaten without soup, and once the topping has run out there is usually a pot of soup to add flavour to the rest of your noodles. There are also various pickles and condiments that you can add to your noodles. Servings are sold and priced in small, medium, and large. (一两；二两；三两）The small is more of snack, so start with the medium. There is a good spot in the street behind the Zhongshan Hotel.
Roasted Suckling Pig. The pig is fed with rice, roasted using special local methods, and then flavored with shallot, soy sauce and white sugar.
Snail made with sour peppers, shallot, ginger and sanhua wine.
Steamed Bake Meat with Water Chestnut made from peeled water chestnut, meat and spicies.
Steamed Mung Bean and Meat Wrapped in Lotus Leaf. Home-style dish with streaky pork with skin, soy sauce, mung bean flour, lotus leaf, fermented tofu, and lots of spices.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Guilin
Where To Stay & Best Hotels in Guilin - updated Apr 2024
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Guilin Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.
