Eating Your Way Around Nanjing

Qinhuai River at night

by Ernie Diaz

So you’ve made your way to venerable Nanjing, and you’re standing by the paifang at Sun Yat-sen’s Mausoleum. Mount Zijin, rising up behind it, seems more brown than purple. You try to muster the appropriate sentiment for this tribute to one of modern China’s greatest heroes, but it’s not easy. You’re groggy from jetlag, and still rattled from the bus ride over. You wonder if you’ll venture the mausoleum’s facilities, or hold it until you get back to the hotel.

Now imagine if you’d been there on June 1^st, 1929, the day Dr. Sun was interred at the mausoleum. Stern Kuomintang generals stand gravely by, trembling with tears. The sense of loss to China, and her children’s depthless respect for the dead hero, are palpable. Quite a bit more emotionally engaging than scenario A, to say the least.

The point is not that traveling is meaningless without state funerals or other such drama, but that new places and cultures mean more when engaged at some level, rather than merely observed. Unless you’re a war journalist, your most intense engagement with a new place will be at the culinary level. As a typical traveler, nothing will be more immediate or meaningful to you than keeping your well-fed corpus comfortably full. That’s why you McDonald’s world tourists are anathema – you’re willfully spurning the truest way at hand to literally internalize and process a new place’s culture.

So when you make it to Nanjing, by all means stop at the mausoleum. Do attempt a grasp at the history emanating from Confucius Temple. Try your best to keep the kids quiet at the Memorial Hall of the Nanjing Massacre. But to become one with Nanjing, however temporarily, commit to a meal at one of its famed restaurants.

Nanjing cuisine is known as Jin Su, or Jin Ling. It has lingered, understandably, in the shadow of Shanghai cuisine’s endless munificence. But even the most effete gourmet tires of steamy, saucy, overworked cuteness. When he does, Jin Su is waiting, with an emphasis on original flavors and carefully selected raw ingredients. Salted duck, Eight-Delicacies Soup, Longchi carp, these classics and others await at the following restaurants, outstanding for their histories as well as their fare.

绿柳居 Lvliuju / Green Willow House

In 1912, the first year of the Republic, ex-royal chef Chen Xiaoren established this restaurant amidst the willows by Taoye Ferry. In addition to Nanjing specialties, he introduced vegetarian dishes favored by Qing royalty. Wei Cailong, his successor, was particularly adept at these offerings, meatless yet redolent with the savor of chicken, beef, or fish. There on the banks of the Qinhuai, Nanjing’s elite would gorge their way through entire vegetarian banquets.

During the mainland’s Kuomintang period (Minguo), both Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek would frequent Green Willow House with their glamorous wives. After tasting a recommended vegetarian dish, Chiang nodded appreciatively, commenting “Tastes good, like our Jinhua ham in Zhejiang.” The vegetarian ham is still on the menu, one of a long list of specialties.

马祥兴 Maxiangxing

In 1845, during the reign of Qing Emperor Daoguang, famine racked China’s ribs. Ma Sifa, a Hui Muslim farmer, left his destitute village in Henan and made his way to Nanjing. He opened a humble little food stall by Huashen Temple, serving rough but hearty meals to the farmers going to town to peddle firewood. With no signage but many dedicated customers, the stall was soon known as Ma Huihui Meal Booth, ‘Huihui’ being the local appellation for Muslims.

After Ma died, his son moved the operation to a Hui community that became today’s Yuhuatai area, and changed the name to Maxiangxing. Rather than stick with Muslim standbys of beef and mutton, Maxiangxing focused on fish, duck, and shrimp, the culinary stalwarts of the south Yangtze River. Today, Maxiangxing’s four most famous dishes are Beauty Liver, Squirrel Fish, Egg Shao-Mai, and Phoenix-tailed Prawns.

魁光阁 Kuiguangge

Kuiguangge’s story stretches back to the Ming Dynasty. It’s named for an eponymous pavilion, a remarkable six-sided, three-story structure facing the Qinhuai River. The site honored historical victors in China’s civil service examination. The restaurant’s current structure was built in 1927, and gained a big reputation as a teahouse featuring storytelling par excellence.

Today it is solely a restaurant, albeit one turned out in elegantly classical style. Spiced broad beans and tea eggs figure among its renowned “Eight Groovy Qinhuai River Snacks” (‘Groovy’ is our best shot at translating juemiao).

奇芳阁 Qifangge

At the end of Qing Emperor Guangxu’s reign, there were plenty of ruffians to extort and otherwise plague a restaurant as prosperous as Qifangge. By the Minguo Era, however, the restaurant’s ownership bristled with politicos and military heavies. Nanjing’s socialites were thus safe from unpleasantness, as they thronged the place to schmooze over Nanjing snacks: sesame cakes fried in duck oil, chicken gravy noodles, and assorted vegetable baozi.

永和园 Yongheyuan

Founded as the Xueyuan (Snow Garden) restaurant at the end of the Qing Dynasty, Yongheyuan reached its peak in the mid-1930s, under the care of two chefs who turned out Yangzhou specialties, like Huangqiao baked rolls and Kaiyang shredded tofu, with consummate skill. It was bought and renamed in gloomy 1939 by Bian Yongsheng, who wanted the restaurant to “forever accumulate wealth in harmony”. Looks like he’s had his wish so far.

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