Hangzhou: Where to Actually Eat
Heads up: some links here are affiliate links. Book or buy through them and we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only point you to things we would actually use.
Hangzhou cuisine, Hang cai, is dish-based rather than restaurant-based: a handful of specific dishes matter more here than any single named restaurant, with one honest exception below. Here’s what to actually order and where the confusion usually starts.
The dishes that actually belong to Hangzhou
Dongpo Pork is braised pork belly, named for the poet-official Su Dongpo, who is said to have invented the recipe while serving as a local governor. West Lake Vinegar Fish (Xihu cuyu) is a sweet-sour poached fish, traditionally freshwater fish from the lake itself, though sourcing varies by restaurant today. Longjing Shrimp (Longjing xiaren) pairs river shrimp with the same Dragon Well tea leaves grown in the hills above the city, a dish that only really makes sense once you’ve seen the tea village it’s named for. Beggar’s Chicken is clay-baked in lotus leaves, a whole chicken sealed and slow-cooked, traditionally cracked open tableside. Sister Song’s Fish Soup (Songsao yugeng) is a thick, savory fish soup with a folk-tale origin story attached to it. Lotus-root dishes and green-tea sweets round out a full meal, both drawing on the lake and the tea hills for their core ingredients.
The one restaurant name worth knowing
Louwailou, on the lakeside since 1848, is the one restaurant here worth naming outright. It serves the full local canon, Dongpo Pork, Beggar’s Chicken, West Lake Vinegar Fish, in one sitting, which makes it a reasonable one-stop introduction if you’re only eating out once during a short trip. Beyond Louwailou, treat any other specific restaurant recommendation you read online skeptically; Hangzhou’s food scene is dish-driven, and local spots turn over often enough that a name from a year-old blog post isn’t a reliable bet.
Skip the xiaolongbao hype
If a “must-eat Hangzhou” list puts xiaolongbao (soup dumplings) at the top, that list is wrong: xiaolongbao is a Shanghai and Jiangsu dish, not a native Hangzhou one. You’ll still find it on menus around Hefang Street because it travels well and tourists expect it, but ordering it here is ordering a dish from two provinces over. Order Longjing Shrimp or West Lake Vinegar Fish instead; both actually belong to this city.
Where to eat it
Hefang Street is the easiest concentration of Hang cuisine restaurants and stalls, a free pedestrian stretch a short walk from West Lake’s eastern shore. It’s touristy by nature, given the location, but the food itself is genuine; the trick is choosing a sit-down restaurant over the pre-packaged snack stalls if you want the dishes above rather than mass-market street snacks aimed at day-trippers.
Read more
For where to stay near this food scene, see where to stay in Hangzhou , or the main guide for how a meal here fits into a full day.