Guangzhou cuisine combines the characteristics of local flavors such as Nanhai cuisine, Panyu cuisine, Dongguan cuisine, Shunde cuisine, Zhongshan cuisine, Siyi cuisine, etc., and its rich and delicate ingredients and light taste are the important reasons for its popularity. Guangzhou cuisine pays attention to the taste of "clear, fresh, tender, smooth, refreshing and fragrant", and pursues the original flavor and fresh fragrance of raw materials. There are many kinds of condiments in Guangzhou cuisine, including sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, salty and fresh. However, only a small amount of ginger, onion and garlic are used as "materials", and less spicy spices such as peppers are used, which will not be salty and sweet.
This pursuit of lightness, freshness and original flavor not only conforms to the climate characteristics of Guangdong, but also meets the requirements of modern nutrition. This is a scientific food culture. Since most overseas Chinese come from Cantonese, Cantonese cuisine has become the representative of Chinese food abroad? .
Guangzhou's famous dishes include: boiled chicken, roasted goose, roast suckling pig, braised pigeon, barbecued pork, stewed lobster in soup, steamed bass, aunt abalone, Liaoshen in abalone sauce, boiled shrimp, bird's nest with coconut sugar, fried beef river, Laohuo soup, Guangzhou Wenchang chicken, clay pot rice, Cantonese roast duck, steamed ribs with soy sauce and so on.
By the Tang Dynasty, Guangzhou cuisine had paid more attention to improving cooking skills, knowing how to use ingredients and mastering cooking. According to Ling Yi, at that time, people in Guangzhou used cooking methods such as boiling, steaming, frying, stewing, roasting and retort, and also used various seasonings such as sauce, vinegar, ginger, pepper and cinnamon, and Guangzhou cuisine began to diversify.
Barbecued pork in Ming and Qing Dynasties, Guangzhou cuisine constantly absorbed the essence of Chinese and foreign food culture, which made Lingnan food culture enter the first golden age: on the one hand, it developed and improved rapidly by integrating the essence of foreign food culture; On the other hand, it radiates outward, and Guangzhou cuisine follows the footsteps of overseas Chinese in Guangdong to Europe and America.
In the Qing Dynasty, a number of famous dishes appeared in Guangzhou, and their cooking methods were diversified and beautified. The "Man-Han Banquet" (hereinafter referred to as "Han Banquet"), which combines Cantonese cuisine, Sichuan cuisine, Jiangsu cuisine and Shandong cuisine in one furnace, is all the rage in Guangzhou, marking the peak of Guangzhou cuisine cooking skills. In modern times, a Guangzhou restaurant accepted the influence of western food and absorbed many of its cooking skills, such as "combination of Chinese and western food", "western food cooking" or "combination of Chinese and western food", which all reflected the value orientation of blending Chinese and western food cultures in Lingnan and made itself more distinctive.