|
|
|
|
Suzhou's cooking, with its emphasis on fish culled from the nearby lakes and rivers, is justly renowned, and the area around Guanqian Jie is a good place to look for food. The
Songhelou Caiguan,
on the south side of Guanqian Jie, a couple of hundred metres east of Renmin Lu, is the most famous
restaurant
in town - it claims to be old enough to have served Emperor Qianlong. The menu is elaborate and long on fish (crab, eel and squirrel fish and the like), and it's an interesting if not cheap place to dine. A short walk farther east brings you to a small alley, leading south, called Taijian Long, where a number of traditional Chinese restaurants are located, including the excellent
Gongdelin,
which serves vegetarian dishes only.
You can find more reasonably priced Suzhou specialities either at the Zhenhe Restaurant on Daichengqiao Lu just south of the Shiquan Jie intersection, or along Xi Er Lu running parallel to the outer moat just east of Panwen and south of the Sheraton Hotel, including yinyu ("silver fish") and kaobing (grilled pancakes with sweet filling).
Back on Guanqian Jie, just south of Taijian Nong, one block east of Renmin Lu, is the
Xibu Pijiu Niupa Cheng,
signposted in English as "Western B&B City", and dressed up as an outpost of the American Wild West; there's a menu in English, with pizza and other Western foods, and it's good value. Down in the southeast of town, diagonally across the intersection from the
Youyi Hotel,
is a good place for cheap, quick Chinese dishes, the
Zhuyuan Canting.
East along Zhuhui Lu from the
Youyi Hotel
is the
Jiangnan Phoenix Chicken,
a large and reasonably priced Shanghainese restaurant at 210 Zhuhui Lu, marked in English by a large sign with a goofy chicken in the front and offering dishes like "Big Emperor Snake" and "Pepper Crab" at reasonable prices. The best Korean restaurant in town is the uncreatively named
Korean Restaurant
next to the
Zhenhe Restaurant
on Daichengqiao Lu, just south of Shiquan Jie. The
Yonghe Doujiang Xiaochi,
right in front of the entrance to Wangshi Yuan, serves up inexpensive snacks, dumplings, noodle soups and
doujiang
(soybean milk) 24 hours a day. Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
|
China,
|