I'm only going to talk about what I ate and how it tasted. This is full of personal bias, small complaints, and random notes. If you're thinking about eating your way through Guangzhou and Shunde, it should still be useful.
My personal ranking runs from high to low: Hang, Top-tier, Above average, NPC, and La-wan-le. The order below is the order I actually ate things. Photos are straight from an iPhone unless I say otherwise.
Roast Goose Rice-Noodle Soup (takeout)
The first takeout order after checking into the hotel was the roast goose I'd been thinking about.
The goose skin was crispy and fragrant—really good. Everything else was just average: soy-sauce-flavored noodles. Not worth a special trip. You'd be better off going straight for the roast goose.
Price: ¥30
Rating: Above average. The roast goose really was good.
Chashanshan (takeout)
I ordered two cups: double-skin milk lime and double-skin milk brown sugar pearls.
- Double-skin milk lime: Very distinctive and very drinkable.
- Double-skin milk brown sugar pearls: Not that different from a regular pearl milk tea, maybe a little more fragrant.
Price: ¥28
Double-skin milk lime: Top-tier.
Double-skin milk brown sugar pearls: NPC.
Tidi Dairy Shop
This is in Jinbang, where there are plenty of trendy shops, but this one had a big crowd, so I went in.
- Double-skin milk: The texture was kind of magical, very fragrant. Not exactly bad, not exactly good. If you don't like the smell of milk, don't order it—Fang took one bite and couldn't continue.
- Buffalo milk: Felt pretty much the same as regular milk to me, but Fang could drink it, and it didn't have a milky smell.
Price: ¥27
Overall: Above average.
Buffalo-Milk Pineapple Bun
Bought from a random crowded place in Jinbang, very close to Tidi Dairy Shop, at a T-shaped intersection.
Very, very good. The pineapple bun had just come out of the oven and smelled amazing, with a crispy crust. The downside was that the buffalo milk was cold and a little too sweet—though I love sweets, so that was fine by me.
Price: ¥15
Overall: Top-tier.
Wumi Porridge (main branch)
There's a queue, so I'd recommend getting there around 5:30. We arrived at 5:40 and it still wasn't open, so we took a number first. A few minutes later we got in. We ordered a two-person set on Meituan.
- Service and environment: Both were fine. The stools were too low, which is not friendly to tall people like me. The guys at the next table were talking so loudly that I couldn't hear a word the server said about the dishes.
- White porridge base: Very fragrant. It has no real seasoning, but the finish is all aroma.
- Seafood platter:
- Shrimp: dead shrimp, and they don't peel them for you. Below average.
- Abalone: extremely tender. I've never had abalone this tender.
- Oyster: dead and fishy as hell.
- Scallop: very fragrant.
- Squid rings: average, a bit mealy.
- Beef tendon: Chewy and fragrant, but that's about it, and a little fishy.
- Pork offal: Very good, especially the small intestine. It was as fragrant as the pork stomach in pork stomach soup, with no fishiness at all.
- The final porridge at the bottom of the pot: Killer.
Price: ¥455
Overall: Above average. The ingredient problems were serious.
Pinxiang Rib Rice (second branch)
(I didn't get a photo of the rib rice—it hadn't arrived yet when I took this.)
- Chicken feet: Better than Diandude's. Very soft and sticky.
- Pork intestine: Black pepper flavor, quite fresh, slightly salty.
- Steamed meat: Very much like Chaoshan beef balls, firm texture, pretty good.
- Rib rice: So damn good. Unbeatable.
- Water spinach: Better than regular morning glory, fresh and refreshing.
Price: ¥56
Rating: Hang. If we hadn't been planning another meal, Fang and I both wanted to order the whole thing again.
Traditional Hand-Ground Sesame Paste
Picked a random shop on Xihua Road and ordered a mixed paste—sesame plus peanut.
Very, very fragrant and delicious. I don't even like sesame paste, and I was scarfing it down. That said, I thought the mixed sesame-peanut flavor was a bit weird. I'd recommend ordering plain sesame paste.
Price: ¥9
Hang!
Xicun Fuji Fish Ball Noodles
Fried fish skin was fragrant, the noodles were springy, and the soup was fragrant. But I don't think it's worth a special trip—maybe because I don't love noodles.
Price: ¥11
Above average.
Xinxingfeng (Feng Stewed Soup King branch)
- Ginseng stewed silkie chicken: Basically a very fragrant chicken soup.
- Monkey head mushroom and conch stewed pork stomach: So good... absolutely divine.
- Salted egg meat patty rice (2 bowls): Very tasty and great with rice.
Price: ¥92
Hang.
Dongchuan Charcoal Claypot Chicken · Durian Claypot Chicken (Guangzhou first branch)
If you like durian, do not miss this. Very, very good. The only downside is that it's too salty—by the end it was explosively salty.
Price: ¥167
Overall: Top-tier.
Zhu Rou Po Private Kitchen (Ronggui main branch)
I straightened the roast goose photo because it was crooked—sue me.
- Pork stomach soup: The best pork stomach soup I've had in my life. No joke.
- Roast goose and char siu: The goose skin was ridiculous—crispy as hell. The char siu was also good but on the sweet side.
- Maggi sauce prawns (4 pieces): The Maggi sauce on the outside was tasty, but the shrimp meat itself was average. Not recommended.
- Steamed marble goby with fresh Sichuan pepper: The fish was fresh and tender, but it tasted only like steamed fish, with no other flavor. A bit average.
Price: ¥1027
Overall: Above average, because the price was also very high.
Zero Degree Ice Room
Grilled durian mango sea salt cheese milk ice: very good. Highly recommend stopping by if you're nearby. The environment lost points—no air conditioning inside, incredibly stuffy. After the milk ice arrived and we'd been eating for a while, the temperature dropped and then they turned on the AC...
Price: ¥78
With the environment deduction, only Above average.
Erlong Rongji
- Stir-fried clams: Many were dead, and some hadn't spit out sand. Bad experience.
- Roast goose: Different from Zhu Rou Po's, but both very good. Fang said maybe they added huoxiang.
- Chencun rice noodles: Springy and soft. Pour the roast goose and its sauce over the noodles and mix—absolutely amazing.
- Black bean dace with sweet potato leaves: God-tier. Best vegetable of the trip. I ate almost half the plate by myself.
Because it's by the river, the environment isn't great, and there were a lot of mosquitoes bothering us.
Price: ¥185
Top-tier.
A Bao Lemon Tea (takeout)
Saw lots of storefronts and ads in Shunde. Actually terrible. The sticky-rice-scented lemon tea had a weird taste.
Price: ¥40
La-wan-le!
Beef Offal (takeout)
Ordered from a random takeout place. Large portion, fragrant, and tasty. If this had been a highly rated offline beef offal shop, it probably would have been amazing. That's one regret from this trip—I didn't get to eat beef offal in person.
Price: ¥40
Above average.
Fenfang Dessert
Walked past and saw a lot of people eating, so I ordered a few things.
- Radish cake: Not the taste I remembered... maybe I remembered wrong. The texture was crumbly. It was okay.
- Egg cake: Uh... it's just egg cake. At first I saw a lot of people buying it and thought there was something special about it.
- Egg tart: Highly recommended. The crust and filling are very different from KFC's. The filling is sweet and fragrant, not too sweet, and not greasy at all.
Price: ¥41
Egg tart: Hang. The other two: NPC.
Xiongji Chicken Porridge
Lots of mosquitoes, bad environment.
- Beef rice roll: The best rice roll I've had in my life. Does Chengdu's rice roll even deserve to be called rice roll? The sauce was savory and fresh, the texture springy. After the first plate I wanted to order a second. If you order it, definitely add an egg—I forgot.
- Xiongji smooth chicken porridge: Aroma on the level of concentrated soup stock. The porridge was full of chicken soup savoriness. Excellent.
Price: ¥23
Even with the bad environment, Hang! Please open under my apartment building.
Pig Trotter Qiang Charcoal Stove Night Trotter Rice
Ordered the four-point-gold cut, ¥35 portion. I came to Guangzhou for exactly this bite.
Soft, sticky, and so fragrant it made me dizzy. The downside: I went at 4 p.m., so the meat wasn't hot, only warm, and it was a bit too salty—you have to eat it with rice.
Price: ¥35
Hang!
Baiyang Buns
Maybe I'm just used to the garbage buns in the south... I thought these were quite average and a bit hard to get used to. The zucchini egg bun was very good.
Price: ¥25
Above average.
Ending
Guangzhou and Shunde are absolutely worth visiting. I hate my stomach—it couldn't fit more meals. If you have questions about any of the shops above, feel free to ask.