What to eat in Guangzhou
11 Cantonese dishes to try

This is the dish Guangzhou exported to the world — but at the source it's a morning ritual, not just a meal. You choose a pot of tea first (pu'er, oolong or chrysanthemum), then order basket by basket: har gow with wrappers so thin you can see the pink shrimp; pork-and-shrimp siu mai; pillowy char siu bao; egg tarts crisp outside and silky within; chicken feet steamed in black-bean sauce. One etiquette note — when someone pours your tea, tap two fingers on the table to say thanks. Tao Tao Ju has been trading since 1880 and is still where locals bring family for weekend yum cha.

Eat one good Cantonese roast goose and Peking duck starts to look ordinary. The whole bird is marinated with five-spice and roasted in a high-heat charcoal oven until the skin blisters crisp and turns deep mahogany. Below it sits a thin layer of fat that melts on the tongue, while the meat stays juicy rather than dry. It's chopped and served with a sweet-tart plum dip that cuts the richness. The legendary Yue Kee (裕记), out in the suburbs, has had locals driving to it for over 60 years — but Pan Xi and the old-town roast-meat shops do it well too.

Good char siu starts with the right cut — a piece with fat marbled through it (locals call it 半肥瘦, "half-fat, half-lean"). It's marinated in a barbecue-pork sauce with honey, then roasted until the edges caramelise into dark, glossy lacquer while the inside stays moist. The first bite should land all at once: the sweetness of the honey, the smoky char of the edge, the tenderness of the meat. Locals eat it sliced over hot rice with a sweet-savoury sauce and a few blanched greens on the side — a classic everyday lunch you'll find at any roast-meat shop.

This is the dish that proves the whole Cantonese philosophy — no sauce to hide behind, no heavy spice, just a quality free-range bird gently poached in barely-simmering water, then plunged into cold water so the skin tightens and the meat stays pink and juicy right to the bone. It's chopped, served cool, and dipped in ginger-scallion oil (姜葱), finely minced and hit with hot oil. The whole point is the chicken itself — if the bird is good, its clean sweetness comes through with no help. Locals use this dish to judge a kitchen.

Guangzhou's favourite breakfast, made to order in front of you — a thin batter of rice flour is ladled onto a tray and steamed in a cabinet until it sets into a sheet so soft it barely needs chewing. Fresh shrimp, char siu or egg goes inside, then it's rolled, cut into sections, and drizzled with each shop's own lightly sweetened soy. The magic is the texture: slippery, tender, never gummy. The well-known Yin Ji (银记肠粉店) has been doing it for decades and still draws a morning crowd. A few yuan a plate — filling and cheap.

A bowl that looks simple but hides a lot of detail. The best shops still make the egg noodles the old way — juk sing min (竹升面), where a thick bamboo pole is bounced over the dough again and again until the strands turn springy and taut. They're cooked just past raw and laid over plump shrimp wontons that sit hidden at the bottom of the bowl, in a clear broth simmered from dried shrimp and pork bones. The legendary Wu Cai Ji (吴财记面家) in Liwan has been at it for over 70 years and holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand. One trick: push the noodles down under the broth first so they don't go soft on top.

The name "sampan congee" comes from the days when vendors paddled small boats along the Liwan canals selling congee, and customers ate it fresh at the water's edge. Cantonese congee is different from congee elsewhere: it's simmered until the rice dissolves completely into a smooth, creamy texture with no grains left. Then everything goes in — fresh shrimp, thin slices of raw fish, squid, fried peanuts, crisp pork skin, and shredded scallion and ginger. Hot and easy to slurp, it's a breakfast or a late-night bowl that warms you through. Liwan and the lake area are still where you'll find the real thing.

A dessert that comes from neighbouring Shunde (顺德) but has become part of Guangzhou's DNA. It's made from high-fat buffalo milk, steamed so a thin skin forms on the surface — twice — with a custard underneath that's silkier than any milk pudding. Eat it warm or cold; the sweetness is soft, never sharp. Some shops add red beans, bird's nest or quail eggs. Nan Xin (南信牛奶甜品专家) on Shangxiajiu Road has been trading since the 1940s, and people still queue for its double-skin milk and its ginger-curdled milk — the perfect way to close a Cantonese meal.

To understand Cantonese people, you have to understand lou fo tong — soup simmered over low heat for two to four hours from pork bone, chicken or beef, with Chinese herbs and seasonal ingredients like lotus root, carrot, goji berry, fig or winter melon. Locals drink it before meals every day and treat it as tonic, balancing the body's "heat" and "cool" according to traditional theory. A good soup is clear but deep-flavoured from the long simmer — not from seasoning powder. Almost every Cantonese restaurant has a "soup of the day" (例汤) that changes daily.

It looks like a humble plate of fried noodles, but Cantonese diners use it to judge a chef. Wide flat rice noodles (河粉) are dry-fried with marinated beef, bean sprouts, scallion and soy. The whole thing turns on wok hei (鑊气) — the "breath of the wok," that smoky aroma you only get from a screaming-hot pan. Every strand has to be coated in sauce, none sticking, none soggy, none greasy; the noodles stay separate, with a faint char, and the beef stays tender and moist. Simple to describe, hard to do — it takes restaurant-grade heat and a practised wrist. If a plate comes out "dry but not stiff," that's a kitchen that knows what it's doing.

Close out the day with two of Guangzhou's evening pleasures. Claypot rice (煲仔饭) is cooked in a small clay pot over charcoal until a sheet of rice at the bottom crisps into golden crust (锅巴), topped with cured sausage, chicken, salted fish or spare ribs, then dressed with sweet soy and tossed through. That crackly bottom layer is the prize everyone fights over. Then there's tong sui (糖水), the "sugar water" desserts served hot or cold — sago and ginkgo, red-bean soup, ground black sesame, or tofu pudding with milk. Wenming Road (文明路) is lined with tong sui shops that stay open late, where locals gather to end the night.