What to eat in Shenzhen
11 dishes of a migrant city

Before the other traditions, understand Shenzhen's Cantonese base — and that means zao cha (早茶), morning tea with dim sum. You pick a pot of tea first (pu'er, oolong or chrysanthemum), then order basket by basket: har gow with translucent skins, pork-and-shrimp siu mai, fluffy char siu bao, egg tarts crisp outside and soft within, chicken feet in black-bean sauce. One small custom — when someone pours your tea, tap two fingers on the table to say thanks. In Shenzhen you'll find both air-conditioned dim sum halls inside the malls of Futian and Luohu, and old-school Cantonese places.

Walk past a siu laap (烧腊) shop in Shenzhen and you'll stop to look — roast goose with lacquered red skin, honey char siu with caramelised edges, crackling roast pork belly and soy-sauce chicken hung in a row. Order it sliced over hot rice with sweet-savoury sauce and blanched greens — the classic working lunch here. Good char siu uses a fattier cut (半肥瘦), roasted until the edges caramelise but the inside stays juicy; roast goose carries a thin layer of fat under the skin that melts in the mouth. It's authentic Cantonese eating you'll find on every corner.

To understand Cantonese eating (and Shenzhen on that base), understand lao huo tang — soup gently simmered for two to four hours from pork bones, chicken or beef, with Chinese herbs and seasonal ingredients like lotus root, carrot, goji berries, dried figs or winter melon. People here drink soup before a meal and treat it as everyday medicine, balancing the body's "hot and cold". A good one is clear but deep-flavoured from long cooking, not from seasoning powder. Almost every Cantonese restaurant offers a "soup of the day" (例汤) that changes daily.

"Zhou-fen-mian" (粥粉面) are the three pillars of everyday Cantonese eating, found on every corner in Shenzhen — congee boiled until the rice breaks down into a creamy purée, studded with fresh shrimp, thin fish slices or minced pork; cheung fun (肠粉), rice batter steamed fresh into silky sheets, filled with shrimp or char siu and drizzled with the shop's own sweet soy, so smooth you barely chew; and wonton noodle (云吞面), springy egg noodles over whole-shrimp wontons in a clear broth. All cost a few yuan, fill you up, and cost little — the everyday food of this city.

This is a dish Shenzhen does well because of its large Chaoshan community — and it's nothing like Sichuan málà hotpot. The broth is a clear beef-bone soup, not spicy. The heart of it is fresh, never-frozen beef hand-sliced into cuts that each have a name — diaolong (吊龙), tender from along the spine; chibing (匙柄), with a touch of fat; sanhuazhi (三花趾), bouncy and firm. You dunk each slice in the boiling broth for just a few seconds (not minutes!), and the moment it changes colour you lift it out and dip it in sand-tea sauce (沙茶酱). Freshness, the sweetness of the beef and the texture are the stars. Finish with hand-pounded springy beef balls.

Another unmissable Chaoshan dish — lou ngo (卤鹅), a big breed of goose (狮头鹅, the "lion-head goose") simmered in a master stock of dozens of Chinese spices: star anise, cinnamon, clove, soy sauce and rock sugar, until the flavour soaks right through. It's chopped and served cool or warm, glazed with the braising liquid and dipped in garlic-vinegar (蒜泥醋) to cut the richness. The cuts Chaoshan people prize most are the goose liver and head. Chaoshan restaurants and dedicated braised-goose shops in Shenzhen do this beautifully — because actual Chaoshan people are cooking it.

If you've had oyster omelette in Southeast Asia, this is the Chaoshan original — hao luo (蚝烙), a batter of sweet-potato starch and egg fried in a hot pan with fresh oysters, cooked until the edges char crisp while the middle stays soft and chewy, finished with spring onion and coriander. It's served hot with a chilli dip (辣椒酱) or chilli fish sauce. The trick at a good Chaoshan shop is plump, genuinely fresh oysters and a batter thin enough to crisp rather than turn gummy. It's an afternoon snack or beer dish you'll find at Teochew restaurants and food-street stalls like Dongmen.

On to the Hakka, the original locals here before the SEZ — and their flagship dish, yan ju ji (盐焗鸡), salt-baked chicken. A whole bird is rubbed with salt, ginger and Chinese herbs, wrapped, and buried in scorching-hot rock salt to bake slowly. The result is meat that's tender and juicy right to the bone, with glossy golden skin scented faintly of salt and herbs. It's torn into pieces and eaten with salt-and-pepper dip or ginger sauce. The pleasure is in its simplicity — no sauce to mask anything, just the clean sweetness of a good free-range bird and the scent of salt. Find it at Hakka and many Cantonese restaurants.

Another Hakka classic — niang dou fu (酿豆腐), stuffed tofu. The story goes that the Hakka migrated south from the wheat-eating north, where they ate dumplings; arriving in rice country with no flour for wrappers, they stuffed the pork filling into tofu instead. Soft tofu is filled with seasoned minced pork, pan-fried until golden, then braised in a clay pot with sauce until the flavour soaks through. The pork stays juicy, the tofu soft, the sauce rounded — it's homely, comforting cooking that's lovely over rice. You'll find it at Hakka restaurants and plenty of everyday Cantonese places across Shenzhen.

Shenzhen is just across the border from Hong Kong, so Hong Kong food has seeped right in — above all the cha chaan teng (茶餐厅), the Hong Kong-style cafe that serves everything fast and cheap. The star is Hong Kong milk tea (港式奶茶), strained through a cloth bag until silky (nicknamed "silk-stocking" tea), strong and aromatic against evaporated milk, hot or iced. Pair it with a pineapple bun (菠萝包), crisp and sweet on top, an egg tart (蛋挞), or baked pork-chop rice (焗猪扒饭). For Hong Kong's coffee-tea blend, order a yuanyang (鸳鸯), coffee mixed with milk tea. It's the easy, cheap meal Shenzheners eat every day.

Shenzhen is a young tech city with bubble-tea shops and specialty coffee on nearly every corner — and the fun part is that two of the new-wave tea brands (新茶饮) famous across China were born in Guangdong. HEYTEA (喜茶) started in Jiangmen in 2012 (originally Royal Tea, 皇茶) and later moved its headquarters to Nanshan District in Shenzhen; Nayuki (奈雪的茶) was founded directly in Shenzhen in 2015. Both pushed Chinese tea upmarket with quality leaf, fresh fruit and a cap of cheese foam (芝士). Try a cheese-foam fruit tea or a brown-sugar boba milk tea at a flagship store — it's the taste of this young city right now.