The specialties of Hangzhou cuisine include clear soup fish balls, spiced peanuts, vinegar fish from West Lake, shredded chicken with Hangzhou chrysanthemum, fried pork slices with celery and so on.

Hangzhou dishes refers to a famous dish that originated or flourished in Hangzhou. Hangzhou cuisine is one of the eight major cuisines in China and the most important one in Zhejiang cuisine. Hangzhou dishes pays attention to the original flavor, exquisite selection of materials, taking into account the seasons, orderly cooking, exquisite modeling, full of color, flavor and taste. Hangzhou dishes is characterized by "lightness and moderation, fine selection of materials, advancing with the times and tending to diversification". "Paleness" is an important feature of hangzhou dishes.