Dexinzhai Restaurant

Dexinzhai is one of the oldest continuously operating restaurants in Foshan - established in the Qing Dynasty as the Heji pork shop and renamed Dexinzhai several decades later, the room has anchored the Foshan tea-house scene for more than a century. The format is the heritage Cantonese tea-house tradition at its most authentic: morning dim sum service, bamboo steamers, the older lapsang and pu-erh tea programme, and the long-running pork-roasting kitchen that gives the restaurant its founding identity.

The dim sum programme is Foshan's most respected. The standard har gow shrimp dumpling, siu mai pork-and-shrimp dumpling, char siu bao steamed pork bun and turnip cake are run at the higher Cantonese tea-house standard, plus the kitchen's quieter heritage signatures - the rice-noodle roll with pork, the lotus-leaf rice with chicken and dried mushroom, the steamed sponge cake. The roasting kitchen runs the cha siu (sweet barbecue pork), the siu yuk (crispy pork belly) and the Cantonese roast duck - the heritage trio that the older Cantonese tea-house must do well.

The tea programme is the strength of the room. The list runs to twelve regional Chinese teas served in the older gongfu tea-house format: a careful Phoenix Dancong oolong, a serious aged pu-erh, a careful jasmine-pearl green and a selection of yancha rock teas. A serious yum-cha morning here is structured around the tea, not the dim sum.

Service is the unfussy Cantonese tea-house register - quick, knowledgeable, and patient with a foreign diner who needs the older menu translated. For a long solo Saturday-morning yum-cha or a heritage-Cantonese first dinner with a partner, Dexinzhai is among the most authentic bookings in southern China.

Dexinzhai is the considered solo-dining dim sum in Foshan. The Qing-era tea-house format - bamboo steamers, the older lapsang and pu-erh tea selection, the morning trolley service - is among the most authentic Cantonese tea-house experiences in southern China, and a solo seat at the tea-house bar handles a long Saturday-morning yum-cha service naturally.