What to eat in Suzhou
11 dishes before you leave

Suzhou's signature dish, and a piece of knife work that stops you mid-conversation. A mandarin fish is deboned, scored into a tight crosshatch, then battered and fried so every fan of flesh curls open like a squirrel's bushy tail. It comes whole, head up and tail raised, drenched tableside in a bright-red sweet-sour tomato glaze poured on hot so the fish gives a faint squeak. The flesh inside stays tender while the surface crackles. The original house is Songhelou (松鹤楼), open since 1737, where a legend says the Qianlong Emperor tasted it and gave it its name.

Slivers of paddy eel are stir-fried with soy, sugar and rice wine into a thick, glossy dark-brown sauce, mounded on a plate with a well pressed in the middle and a scatter of minced garlic and white pepper. Then scorching-hot oil is poured into that well right at the table — it hits the garlic with a loud "shaa!" and a cloud of fragrance rises. The dish's name, xiang you (响油), literally means "the oil that speaks." It's deep and balanced, savoury-sweet, the eel soft and silky — a classic that is both fine cooking and a little tableside theatre.

Suzhou loves braised pork as much as any city. Cherry pork (樱桃肉) is pork belly cut into cubes and braised in soy, sugar and red yeast rice until it turns a bright cherry red and melts as you chew. Jiangfang (酱方) is a big square block of belly braised whole until the skin turns to glossy jelly and the meat is tender enough to cut with chopsticks. Both are gently sweet and savoury in the Jiangnan style — eat them with a steamed bun or rice to catch the sauce and cut the richness. They're banquet dishes that turn up at the important meals.

This dish turns something salty into something sweet, and does it beautifully. A square block of Jinhua ham (金华火腿) is scored into strips and steamed repeatedly with rock sugar, sweet wine and lotus seeds or longan until the meat softens. The fierce saltiness is drawn out and replaced by a fragrant sweetness; the ham ends up tender and springy, glossy and red with syrup. It's served with thin steamed pancakes so you can wrap a strip of ham like Peking duck. It's a dish that shows both the refinement and the playfulness of the Jiangnan kitchen.

The dish that weds two of Suzhou's signatures. Tiny river shrimp from Taihu Lake are coated in egg white and a whisper of starch, velveted in oil until plump and translucent, then stir-fried briefly with fresh Biluochun (碧螺春) green tea leaves and a splash of the freshly brewed tea. The result is clean and faintly sweet, the shrimp snappy, the green tea drifting up in a gentle perfume. It's a cousin of Hangzhou's Longjing shrimp, but made with Suzhou's own signature tea, and it's at its best in spring when the year's first leaves are picked.

Locals call this the "Hermès of noodles." The "three shrimp" are three parts of the river shrimp — the meat (虾仁), the roe (虾籽) and the rich tomalley from the head (虾脑) — each peeled out by hand, more than a hundred shrimp for a single bowl. The meat is springy, the roe briny-fragrant, the tomalley creamy and deep, all tossed with thin noodles in a light sauce. It's strictly a seasonal dish, available only in early summer (roughly May to July). It costs several times a normal bowl, purely for the labour — and Suzhou locals wait all year for it.

If three-shrimp noodles is Suzhou in its formal clothes, aozao mian is the bowl people in Suzhou and Kunshan eat every morning. It comes from Kunshan (昆山), next door to Suzhou — a "red broth" (红汤) simmered from eel bones and duck until it's deep and richly sweet, ladled over thin springy noodles and topped with crisp-fried eel or braised duck leg. Locals are particular about kuan tang / jin tang (宽汤/紧汤) — more broth or less — and how hot the bowl is, all ordered to taste. It's a warm, simple, deeply satisfying way to start the day.

The Suzhou mooncake is nothing like the Cantonese kind. Its su pi (酥皮) pastry is built from lard rolled into thin sheets and layered until it bakes up crisp and shattering, like a French puff. The star is the savoury fresh-pork version (鲜肉月饼), packed with a juicy minced-pork filling and eaten hot — the pastry showers down with each bite and the pork is sweet and savoury at once. Locals queue for them fresh in autumn. There are sweet ones too, like rose and pine nut. The legendary pastry house is Daoxiangcun (稻香村), open since 1773; the sweet ones travel home well as gifts.

Suzhou is a city of steamed rice cakes (糕团), and it treats them as an art. Glutinous and plain rice are steamed into pretty shapes — some with a sweet red-bean centre, some drizzled with syrup and scattered with amber osmanthus (桂花) blossoms that carry a soft, sweet floral scent. Among the favourites are dingsheng cake (定胜糕), a pink ingot-shaped sweet for good luck; meihua cake (梅花糕), shaped like a plum blossom with a filling; and osmanthus sticky-rice cake in autumn. The famous house is Huangtianyuan (黄天源), making Suzhou rice cakes for over a century. They're soft and chewy, lightly sweet, gently fragrant.

All of China's autumn craving converges on a small crab with brown fur on its claws — and the hairy crab from Yangcheng Lake (阳澄湖) near Suzhou is reckoned the richest of all. It's steamed whole to keep it at its freshest, dipped in black vinegar with shredded ginger and chased with warm yellow wine. The saying goes "九雌十雄" — in the 9th lunar month eat females for their roe, in the 10th eat males for their creamy fat. Because it's pricey and widely faked, real Yangcheng crab carries an anti-counterfeit ring tag with a code. For the surest thing, eat it at source in the crab villages of Bacheng (巴城). Honestly, it's strictly seasonal and not cheap.

Suzhou loves duck as much as pork. Lu ya (卤鸭) is a marinated duck, sliced cold, its tender meat scented with five-spice and a hint of osmanthus — a snack or a side, easy to love. The banquet version is mu you chuan ya (母油船鸭), duck braised in soy and wine until the meat is falling-apart tender and soaked through with deep flavour. The name means "boat duck," because cooks once made it aboard the pleasure boats that plied the canals, serving it to wealthy guests. It's sweet-savoury and balanced in the Jiangnan way — a dish that tells the story of eating on the water in this canal city.