Tanjia cuisine was created by Tan Zongjun, a bureaucrat in the late Qing Dynasty. Who is Tan Zongjun? He is from Danzao, Nanhai County. This person was ranked second in high school but was famous for his family dinners. There are pairs of flagpole clips in Tongnanzhuang Town in Danzao Town. The two flagpole stones are engraved with the words "Tongzhi Jiawuke Jinshi, hand-picked to be second and third", and "awarded as editor of the Hanlin Academy".

Tan Zongjun is most famous not for his fame but for his cooking skills. The cooking methods of Tanjia cuisine are mainly roasting, stewing, simmering and steaming. They are especially good at dry food processing, and are good at cooking sea delicacies in high soup and high fire. They are especially famous for cooking bird's nest and shark's fin.

As an editor at the Hanlin Academy, why did Tan Zongjun turn to catering? In fact, Tan Zongjun's father was a famous scholar in the Qing Dynasty. He loved delicacies throughout his life. When entertaining colleagues at home, he always arranged them himself. The exquisite and delicious delicacies at home often won unanimous praise from his colleagues. In the official circles of Beijing at that time, Tan's cuisine was quite famous. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, most of the officials were keen on acquiring land, but the Tan family and his son were still focused on food. In order to continuously improve their cooking skills, they often spent a lot of money to hire famous chefs from the capital, and learned the techniques during the cooking process. Since then, the Tan family has continuously absorbed the strengths of chefs from various schools, combined southern cuisine with northern cuisine, and over time created a unique Tan family style cuisine. Due to the exquisite selection of ingredients and meticulous preparation, Tan's cuisine was deeply appreciated and respected by gourmets from all walks of life, especially its fire skills and seasoning techniques. At that time, it was well-known in the capital as a family dish. Later, due to the poor official luck of the Tan family and the decline of the family fortune, Tan Zongjun simply resigned and focused on running Tan's cuisine, which allowed Tan's cuisine to further develop.

In the past, there was a saying in the food industry that the south was sweet and the north was salty. When cooking Tan's cuisine, it was often half and half sugar and half salt, using sweet to enhance the freshness and salty to enhance the aroma. The dishes produced were moderate in taste and fresh. It is delicious and is loved by both southerners and northerners. Another characteristic of Tanjia cuisine is that it pays attention to the original flavor. Spices such as Sichuan pepper are rarely used to cook Tanjia cuisine, and seasonings such as pepper are rarely sprinkled after the dishes are cooked. What is important when eating Tanjia cuisine is that when eating chicken, you must taste the chicken, and when eating fish, you must taste the freshness. You must not use other odors or strange smells to interfere with the original taste of the dishes. When stewing vegetables, you must not add soup or add juice, otherwise it will not be authentic.

Tanjia cuisine is a family dish that pays attention to slow cooking and careful cooking. Unlike the dishes in ordinary restaurants, which are often cooked quickly due to business needs, Tanjia cuisine uses more cooking methods such as roasting, cooking, and cooking. Braising, stewing, steaming, grilling, pan-frying, roasting and soup, etc., but there are very few stir-fried dishes, and they do not pay attention to techniques such as shaking the spoon and turning the spoon. It is for this reason that if you want to eat Tanjia cuisine, you have to It is ideal to make a reservation in advance to allow the chef enough time to prepare ingredients and make the soup. For example, boil the chicken to make the chicken juice, then concentrate it and use it to make dishes or soup bases.

Tanjia cuisine is most famous for cooking bird's nest and shark's fin. In Tanjia cuisine, there are more than a dozen ways to cook shark's fin.

Tanjiacai’s Bird’s Nest in Clear Soup is even more unique. It does not use chemical alkaline treatment of bird’s nests. Although the bird’s nests raised with alkali are white in color and plentiful in quantity, they suffer a great loss in nutrition. The method of making this dish is to soak the bird's nest in warm water for three hours, then rinse it repeatedly with water, and carefully remove the bird's feathers and other impurities. After the bird's nest is soaked, put it in a large soup bowl, pour in chicken soup, and serve Steam for 20 to 30 minutes, take out and put it in a small bowl, then boil the clear soup made from chicken, duck, elbow, scallops, ham and other ingredients, add an appropriate amount of sugar and salt, adjust the taste and put it into a small bowl , sprinkle a few finely chopped ham shreds on each bowl and serve. The soup is as clear as water, slightly beige, and delicious. The bird's nest is soft and not broken, and is highly nutritious. It is a representative work of Tan family cuisine.

According to legend, there is an unwritten rule for eating Tan’s cuisine, that is, no matter how powerful the diners are, they must enter the Tan’s door to eat. At that time, there were many dignitaries and celebrities who came here to eat. , hoping that Master Tan's family would go out to "external meetings", but they were all rejected.

In addition, Tanjia cuisine also pays attention to gourmet food and beautiful utensils, and most dishes are served according to seating. Sharing meals for one person is very hygienic. When tasting Tanjia cuisine, they often pay attention to the environment, allowing customers to enjoy the simple and elegant atmosphere. Slowly taste it in the atmosphere. Precisely because Tan's cuisine is so unique, some people once praised it as "this is the pinnacle of human food civilization."