Shandong Food & Traditional Cuisine

Shandong gave China Lu cuisine, the oldest of the four great regional traditions and the one that shaped northern Chinese cooking and the imperial kitchen more than any other.

Its hallmarks are clear, deeply reduced stocks — Lu chefs are known for extracting flavour into broth rather than layering sauces — along with the liberal use of scallion and garlic, vinegar from Shandong’s own producers, and a restraint that some find austere after the southern cuisines.

The staples are wheat rather than rice — steamed buns, pancakes, hand-pulled noodles and dumplings — along with the province’s exceptional seafood, and vegetables from the plain. Shandong grows an enormous share of China’s produce.

Two other things matter. The scallion pancake and raw scallion with sauce habit is genuinely regional and surprises visitors. And beer in Qingdao is drunk with seafood as a matter of course, sold by weight from barrels into plastic bags.

Sweet and sour Yellow River carp is the province’s classic and a Lu cuisine set piece: the whole fish fried standing upright with its tail curled, then sauced — a dish that is about technique and presentation as much as flavour, and the ancestor of every sweet-and-sour dish served abroad.

Dezhou braised chicken, cooked whole with spices until the meat falls from the bone, sold at the railway station for a century and eaten cold.

Jiaozi — dumplings — are northern staple food, and Shandong makes them with a range of fillings that includes mackerel on the coast.

Qingdao clams, stir-fried with chilli and garlic, eaten by the bucket with draught beer. The combination is the city’s summer institution.

Scallion pancakes and jianbing, the savoury crepe with egg, sauce and a crisp cracker folded inside, which is northern China’s great breakfast.

Also: braised sea cucumber with scallion, a banquet dish of considerable prestige; Zibo-style barbecue, which became a national phenomenon; and Yantai apples and Laiyang pears.

Beer in a bag is Qingdao’s defining habit: draught Tsingtao is sold by weight from barrels at street-corner shops, poured into a thick plastic bag with a straw, and carried to a seafood stall or home. It is entirely normal and it tastes better than the bottled export.

Qingdao’s seafood markets let you buy clams, prawns and fish and carry them to a nearby restaurant to be cooked for a small fee, which is the best meal in the city.

Banquet drinking in Shandong is a serious and highly codified business, with seating order, a sequence of toasts, and an expectation that the host drinks with each guest in turn. Declining entirely is difficult; declaring a health reason early is the accepted exit.

Weifang and Zibo barbecue: grilled skewers wrapped in a thin pancake with raw scallion and sauce, at long communal tables.

Breakfast is jianbing, buns and soy milk from street carts.

Shandong is China’s principal wine region, which surprises people who assume the industry is confined to the dry west.

The Yantai and Penglai area on the northern coast produces a large share of Chinese wine. The maritime climate is warmer and considerably more humid than Ningxia or Xinjiang, which brings fungal pressure and makes viticulture harder, but the vines do not need burying in winter as they do inland, which is a substantial practical advantage. Changyu, founded at Yantai in 1892, is the oldest winery in China and still the largest, with a wine museum in its original cellars. Cabernet Sauvignon and the local Cabernet Gernischt dominate, and several international producers have invested in the area.

Tsingtao beer is the other drink: founded by German and British investors in 1903, brewed with water from the Laoshan springs, and now among the world’s largest brewers.

Baijiu from Shandong is drunk enthusiastically at banquets, and the province’s reputation for capacity is well earned.