Theoretically, the whole Forbidden City is his home, and he can eat there if he wants. However, in history, emperors of the Ming Dynasty mostly used Ganqing Palace as their bedroom, so they mainly ate here. There are exceptions. For example, Emperor Jiajing in history did not live in the Forbidden City for a long time, but mainly lived in Yuxi Palace in Xiyuan (now Zhongnanhai), and Emperor Zhengde lived in the Leopard Room for a long time.

incidentally, what the emperors of the Ming Dynasty ate can refer to the contents of Ming Taizu's royal meals. At present, there is only one item in June of the seventeenth year of Hongwu (1384), and its breakfast is: mutton fried, fried goose, pork fried with yellow vegetables, plain sauce, steamed pig's trotters' bellies, fried fish twice cooked, and oven cooked. Lunch is: shrimp with pepper vinegar, roasted goose, mutton head and hoof, goose bazi, salted mustard mutton belly plate, garlic vinegar white blood soup, five-flavored steamed chicken, mutton bone with yuan sauce, kidney with spicy vinegar, steamed fresh fish, five-flavored steamed gluten, mutton crystal corner, silk goose powder soup, three-fresh soup, kidney bean chess noodles and minced pepper. According to statistics, there are twelve meals for breakfast and twenty for lunch. As for the content of dinner, it has not been recorded.

In addition, although there are many contents of imperial meals, emperors may not like to taste them all. Most of them have some other dishes they like to eat. According to "The Records of Deliberation", Ming Xizong's favorite food is roasted clams, fried shrimps, frog legs and preserved bamboo shoots, and he especially likes to eat sea cucumber, mullet, shark tendon, fat chicken and pig's trotters. In addition, Xizong also likes fresh lotus seed soup, and likes to eat fresh watermelon and bake it with a little salt. Another example is the chicken track dish in Yunnan, which is worth two pieces of silver per catty. Xizong loves to eat it and once gave it to the wet nurse Hakka. As for Emperor Chongzhen, according to Wang Yuchang's "Ci of Chongzhen Palace", "The emperor loves bird's nest soup, and the caterer cooks the soup. First, he presents it to the company for tasting, and then he gives it to five or six people, and then he enters the imperial palace after drinking salty water. It is also said: Emperor Chongzhen and Empress fasted for 1 days every month, which was quite tasteless. The supervisor of Shang Diet felt that the vegetarian food was sweet because he depilated the raw goose, removed its bowels from the tail hole, stuffed the vegetables, took them out as soon as they were boiled, washed them with wine, and cooked them with sesame oil.