Finding local delicacy while sourcing tea in Fuzhou

I have been visiting Fuzhou, Fujian province of China every year for sourcing Jasmine tea. For me, besides meeting with our tea manufacturers, finding the local delicacy are another important objective that I always looking forward.

Fuzhou Cuisine

In my personal view, the Fuzhou food consists of four main categories. Generally, Fuzhou is a more modernized place and less traditional local cuisines are remained.

1. Seafood
2. Chain Restaurant
3. Local Food
4. Other such as Sichuan Cuisine

A huge seafood restaurant. This is a very common style in FuzhouSichuan style chili steamboat.

Seafood

The seafood restaurant is very popular in Fuzhou. As Fuzhou faces to the sea, their seafood is consistently of very fresh and fine quality. The seafood restaurant is generally used for the entertainment purpose. Usually my manufacturer will bring me there at least once. I think that the price of the seafood in Fuzhou is much cheaper than that in South East Asia. If we order the same seafood in Malaysia, we have to pay more than 300%. In the restaurant, there are variety of choices, like crab, clam, snail, fish, shrimps and prawns. The price is set not according to the cooking but the weight of material. Generally the cooking method is quite simple, like boiling, frying, Sashimi or shabu-shabu style.

Chain Restaurant

Fuzhou is pretty modernized and becoming a well-developed city. There are many chain restaurants operating until midnight. For me generally the taste of food served by those chain restaurants is not very good. They use plenty of MSG in cooking.

Noodle represents local cooking

It is quite rare to run into restaurant that specializes in serving Fuzhou local food. But we could find them at night. Normally those local foods are served at small stalls along the roadside. One of the famous local food is rice noodle cooked with Chinese medicine, and served with meat like duck, chicken or beef. They have fried noodle served with thick gravy made of peanut and sesame. Some of these foods are very delicious if they are making soup from the chicken or duck stock