72 Hangzhou-style restaurants are on the list

The differences in culture, life and diet make travel meaningful. When the tourist meals around downtown areas and scenic spots can no longer satisfy tourists, street food stalls and small restaurants have become new obsession of tourists. On June 30th, 2023 Ctrip Food Forest Global Restaurant Selection List was released, covering more than 6,000 restaurants worldwide, including 67 cities in China and 9 popular overseas food travel destinations. Different from Michelin Guide and Meituan’s "Black Pearl Restaurant" list, this food list covers the whole world, focusing more on the food preference of "China Stomach" and the excavation of local flavor restaurants. This year, there are 72 local flavor restaurants in Hangzhou.

While domestic tourism is rapidly overtaking, outbound tourism is also showing a steady recovery trend. Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore are hot overseas travel destinations. Since May, travelers have turned their attention to the market segments of overseas travel, such as food and car rental.

This year’s Ctrip Food Forest List is a comprehensive list of five dimensions: food production, service details, environmental characteristics, inheritance and innovation and local characteristics. Nine black diamond restaurants, 53 diamond restaurants, 250 platinum restaurants and more than 5,800 gold and silver restaurants were selected in 67 cities in China and 9 cities overseas. Among them, there are many little-known local flavor foods, ingenious shops that have been passed down for generations and kung fu foods with innovative techniques. For example, in the list of silver-medal restaurants focusing on local specialty food shops, there are more than 30% flavor restaurants, and hundreds of small restaurants are listed for the first time; Among the black diamond, diamond and platinum restaurants, over 30% are newly listed or upgraded compared with last year.

Based on the Ctrip food forest list over the years, there are 304 Hangzhou restaurants on the list. Among the 72 newly-added Hangzhou-style restaurants this year, there are not only local Jiangsu and Zhejiang cuisine, but also creative cuisine, and half of them are small restaurants with per capita prices lower than those in 100 yuan, taking into account the needs of tourists, such as delicious food, low price, high cost performance and less queues. Such as Juemeijia Seafood Wonton, Qingchunli, Master Hou’s Hot Stir-fry, Wangsan Barbecue Hot Pot (Head Office), Huanglong Seafood Food Stall, Big Head Restaurant, No.18 Pub and other word-of-mouth restaurants which are well-known to Hangzhou residents and do not need long queues.

The reporter learned from Ctrip that the newly released list is mainly based on the needs of users on the platform. This year, an honorary advisory team composed of representatives of local catering associations, hotel groups, culinary associations, international food associations, gourmets, etc. was added to make recommendations, focusing on the restaurants that can be reached within walking distance of tourists’ gathering places. In the list of overseas destinations, we pay more attention to China tourists’ "China Stomach" and try to find the right local food for "China Stomach".