There are many kinds of snacks in Ningbo, including snacks, cakes and dishes. There are hundreds of snacks here, such as jiaozi with lard, egg dumplings, jiaozi with wine, white sugar cubes, meat buns, sweet soup with eight treasures, fresh meat wonton, shrimp wonton, Chinese cabbage buns, vegetarian buns and so on. A group headed by jiaozi with lard has been formed, including Longfengjin jiaozi, eight-treasure rice with bean paste, crispy foreign sugar with lard, steamed dumplings with fresh meat, steamed dumplings with crystal oil, wonton with fresh meat and three-silk banquet. Pastries include Ning-style cakes, moon cakes, peach cakes, shortcakes, mung bean cakes, sugar cakes, sweet-scented osmanthus, borneol cakes and moss slices. Among them, Cixi Crispy Sugar, Xikou Melaleuca Cake, Sanbei Lotus Sugar and Zhenhai Kumquat Cake have become well-known brands at home and abroad. Dishes include seaweed yellow croaker, foie gras wrapped in pure oil, melon seeds, stewed snails, Lou Maoji dried incense, roasted loach, vermicelli noodles, beef vermicelli, spiced tofu, and three-north salt fried beans.

Ningbo snacks, whether snacks, cakes or dishes, have a unique flavor. Chinese pastry has become one of the twelve schools of pastry food in China. It has the characteristics of strict material selection, fine processing, ingenious modeling and rich nutrition, and has formed the distinctive characteristics of crisp, soft and crisp, sweet and salty, soft and fragrant. Ningbo-style snacks also pay special attention to material selection. For example, lard jiaozi is made of refined white glutinous rice flour, which is embedded with fine lard, white sugar and black sesame seeds. Their colors are like white jade, waxy but not sticky, oily but not greasy, soft and smooth, and fragrant, which is a must for China.

If snacks such as snacks and cakes are never tired of eating because of their unique flavor, then dishes are more appetizing because of their full color, flavor and flavor. For example, Ningbo Loumaoji Xianggan, which has a history of nearly a hundred years, is different from Shaoxing spiced tofu and Xianggan in Suzhou, Wuxi and Changzhou. Although its appearance is not good, its taste is unique. Loumaoji Xianggan is made of high-quality Xianggan by special technology. It is bright in color, fragrant in smell, tough but not firm, soft and loose, salty and fresh, fresh and sweet. It is not only a delicious food to drink and eat, but also a snack. Especially in summer, people like light food, and Lou Maoji Xianggan is a good drink and meal. Nowadays, the above snacks can basically be eaten in Ningbo Chenghuangmiao Snack City. On weekends or holidays, a family of three, or friends get together, order some dishes of melon seeds, dragging yellow croaker, two bowls of beef vermicelli and jiaozi with lard, and then put some cages of fresh meat and crystal oil bags to taste slowly. This is a great enjoyment of life.

There are many special snacks in Ningbo, among which the Melaleuca Cake in Fenghua Xikou is very famous.

Xikou Melaleuca Cake is one of the three specialties in Fenghua, with a history of 100 years. Its founder, Wang Maolong, began to make it in the fourth year of Guangxu in Qing Dynasty (1878). Today, there are many thousand-layer cake shops in Xikou Street, among which "Wang Maolong Thousand-layer Cake Shop" is run by Wang Lingqi, the fourth generation descendant of Wang Maolong, with high quality and prosperous business.

The real name of "the best cake in the world" is "Melaleuca cake", which was originally a small cake produced locally. The main raw materials are flour, taro powder, sugar, refined salt, vegetable oil, sesame, moss and so on. The method is to mix taro powder with flour, add seaweed, roll it into thin slices, then fold it and bake it with charcoal fire. The entrance is crisp and sweet.

Speaking of this cake, I can't help but mention the innovative Wang Maolong. The farmer in Xikou is very clever. He groped to improve the processing method of cakes, made a special oven with yellow mud and added several sweet and salty flavors. The Melaleuca Cake made by him has a unique taste and later became a famous specialty of Xikou.

But there is another reason to call it "the best cake in the world". Fenghua Xikou is the hometown of Chiang Kai-shek. After Jiang came to power, he missed the specialties of his hometown very much. He once sent someone to call the descendants of the Wangs to his side to bake cookies from his hometown for him, and kept asking people to taste them. This kind of biscuit became more and more famous and was finally called "the best cake in the world".

This kind of cake uses little oil, especially no animal oil, which conforms to the nutritional concept of modern people. After the cake is made, it is not easy to go bad, and it can be guaranteed for two or three months at room temperature. The development of tourism has also promoted the prosperity of local flavor industries. Therefore, there are more and more characteristic cake shops in Xikou. Now, in addition to Wang Maolong's old shop, there are Wang Laotou's thousand-layer cake shop, Jiang Shengtai's old shop and Chen's shop. They are lined up on Wuling Road in Xikou Town, and there are dozens of them, large and small. Every family has a special oven, which pays attention to baking and selling now. The thousand-layer cake made by Jiang Shengtai's old shop is made of exquisite materials, using seaweed, a nutritious marine plant, and improving the traditional technology. It is made by thirteen processes, and the cake can reach 27 layers, and it won the "Best Taste Award" in the local flavor making competition.