This is still from the folk imagination. There is a saying that "Tang cuisine" is the ninth largest cuisine. It's not the food in the university cafeteria, but the national banquet in the Great Hall of the People. In fact, since the state banquet in founding ceremony, the background color of the state banquet in China has always been mainly Huaiyang cuisine-because it tastes mild, but not too spicy and salty, which is in line with the tastes of foreign guests.
Another cuisine vying for the "Top Nine" is Tan Jiacai. Tan Jiacai was a family dinner for Tan Zongxun, a bureaucrat in the late Qing Dynasty. After liberation, under the personal arrangement of Zhou Enlai, then Prime Minister of the State Council, he stayed in the Jinghua Hotel and became a living fossil of official dishes. It is said that there were only three tables and three seats in the past, and the organizer had to reserve a seat for the Tan family. The chef was not allowed to borrow it, so there were many rules.
In 2002, Tan Jiacai drove to Shanghai, then known as "the most expensive restaurant in Shanghai". According to media reports, "this cuisine has been praised as the ninth largest in China by discerning Shanghai diners and the media". In 2004, the head of Xinjiang Trade Industry Management Office announced that Xinjiang was planning to promote Qingzhen cuisine to the whole country, making it the ninth largest cuisine. Subsequently, relevant parties in Yunnan, Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia expressed their views and wanted to push local cuisine to the "Nine Great".
Interestingly, Chongqing cuisine should be separated from Sichuan cuisine and appear in the "Nine Major" in the name of Chongqing cuisine. In 2005, at a news conference about the Food Expo, the spokesman said: "Because of historical and geographical reasons, Chongqing cuisine has its own system, but it is shrouded in the name of Sichuan cuisine."