Jingyanglou

Jingyanglou was founded in 1902 in the late Qing as a Huaiyang restaurant in Yangzhou. In 1958, answering the call to build the great northwest, second-generation heir Wang Shaoshan led his apprentices to move the entire Yangzhou flagship to Lanzhou, where it has now rooted for over sixty years as the city's only century-old eatery still in business.

Jingyanglou anchors itself in Lanzhou with authentic Huaiyang cooking alongside Sichuan, Cantonese, Beijing and Long dishes; classics such as the crab-roe lion's head, shredded dry tofu in broth and Wensi tofu have been handed down, making it a distinguished venue for Lanzhou banquets and family feasts.

Its Huaiyang cuisine insists on exacting ingredients, precise knife work and careful heat, valuing natural clarity and gentle freshness; after the move it absorbed northwest produce into a north-meets-south, refined-and-homely style, showing how a time-honoured house adapts its craft to a new home.