A la carte meals offer you a great deal of freedom: select the menu items as you wish!

As a reliable online travel agency, YangtzeRiverTour is honored to be one of the first agency to offer a la carte meals for its valued clients during their trip to China. Everyone has individual preferences and we appreciate that set-menus cannot cater to all tastes. Another consideration is that mass-produced food provided in those restaurants used by some tour operators fail to offer a chance to experience real Chinese food. We are eager to introduce you to the very best Chinese food and believe that you will be happier to be able to make a choice from a varied menu, an arrangement that will doubtless give you greatest opportunity to experience authentic Chinese cuisine. In particular it will ensure satisfaction if you happen to be a vegetarian.

We have included a la carte meals in the tour (as specified in the itinerary) and you are assured that these will be at excellent local restaurants. You will have lunches and/or dinners among local Chinese people. Learning how they use chopsticks, how they cook and enjoy their meals will be quite an experience during your visit. We are sure that by the end of your tour you will have become devotee of Chinese cuisine.

As a nation that pays great attention to courtesy, our cuisine culture is deep rooted in China's history. No one can doubt that China has a rich heritage of fine food, but the most influential and widely known styles are the Cantonese, Sichuan and Shanghai Cuisines.

Cantonese Cuisine: Authentic Cantonese cuisine has the reputation of being China's finest. Fine and rare ingredients are cooked with polished skill and in a dainty style. It emphasizes a flavor which is clear but not light, refreshing but not common, tender but not crude. In summer and autumn it pursues clarity and in winter and spring, a little more substance. The sautéed dishes always rely upon exquisite presentation involving cutting and carving skills.

Sichuan Cuisine: Sichuan cuisine is the most popular cuisine in China because of its appetizing flavors. From as early as the Qing Dynasty (1644 - 1911), books have described a total of 38 cooking methods like to scald, wrap, bake, mix, stew, and adhere, etc. This cuisine features pungent seasonings which are famously known as 'Three Peppers' (Chinese prickly ash, pepper and hot pepper), 'three aromas' (shallot, ginger, and garlic), 'Seven Tastes' (sweet, sour, tingling, spicy, bitter, piquant, and salty), and 'eight flavors' (fish-flavored, sour with spice, pepper-tingling, odd flavor, tingling with spice, red spicy oily, ginger sauce, and home cooking).

Shanghai Cuisine: Shanghai cuisine is traditionally called Benbang cuisine and is formed by a complex flavor structure, cooking style and technique norms. The cuisine stresses the use of condiments while retaining the original flavors of the ingredients and has features of being fresh, smooth and crispy.

It is no exaggeration to say that Chinese cuisine is refined, in its items, esthetics, atmosphere, and effects. For more infromation, please click our Chinese cuisine culture.