The Hakka plates to order
The first three are the "客家三件宝 — three treasures of Hakka cooking" you cannot skip, plus one legendary village feast.
1
The flagship of the Hakka kitchen — a whole free-range chicken rubbed with sand ginger (沙姜) and salt, wrapped in paper, then buried and baked in coarse rock salt dry-roasted until it is searingly hot. The heat cooks the bird slowly from the outside in, with no water to dilute it, so it cooks in its own juices: the skin comes out a glossy gold, the meat stays firm and gently savory, and it carries that unmistakable sand-ginger aroma. Many modern Hakka restaurants serve it hand-torn (手撕盐焗鸡), shredded and tossed in sand-ginger oil so the flavour reaches every piece. A good one is never dry — there is still juice in the meat when you bite.
2
Blocks of tofu, hollowed out and stuffed with seasoned minced pork (some versions add fish or shrimp), pan-fried on the stuffed side until golden, then braised in sauce until the tofu turns soft and drinks up the flavour. The character 酿 means "to stuff" — and the story goes that the Hakka missed the dumplings of their northern homeland but could not grow wheat in the south, so they filled tofu instead of dough wrappers. It is a humble dish that sits on the Hakka table at nearly every meal, and Shenzhen diners call it yong tau foo, just like Hong Kong and Singapore do.
One of the "three treasures", and an old recipe said to go back well over a thousand years — pork belly is boiled, then fried so the skin blisters, sliced and laid face-down in a bowl, topped with mei cai (梅菜) preserved mustard greens that bring a salty-sweet, fermented note, then steamed long and slow until the pork is meltingly soft. It is flipped onto a plate to serve, pork on top, greens beneath, the richness of the belly cut just right by the tangy-salty preserved vegetable. This is a legendary rice dish — so rich it almost demands a bowl of hot steamed rice.
No dish tells the old-Shenzhen story better — a big basin layered with ingredients: pork belly, chicken, duck, meatballs, taro, fried pork skin, shiitake and vegetables, all over a rich broth that seeps down through the layers, so the bottom only gets tastier as the flavours sink in. Poon choi is the banquet dish of the Hakka villages, dating back to the late Southern Song dynasty, served at weddings, festivals, ancestor worship and other celebrations. To this day, villages in Bao'an still hold poon choi feasts, keeping the tradition alive.