Zhejiang Cuisine · FFET10021
West Lake Vinegar Fish
The Qingbai Leichao says West Lake restaurants in Hangzhou were known for vinegar fish, and that in the Kangxi and Yongzheng years the Wuliuju cooked it especially well.
A West Lake vinegar fish glazed with sauce lies on a plate, a bowl beside it holds Longjing shrimp, a square piece of Dongpo pork gleams soy-brown in a clay pot, and a few tea leaves lie at the edge.
The regional cooking of Zhejiang, with Hangzhou attentive to the season and Ningbo skilled with seafood.
The Qingbai Leichao, published in 1916, has an entry on Hangzhou vinegar fish that reads: West Lake restaurants in Hangzhou were known for vinegar fish. It says that in the Kangxi and Yongzheng years a house called the Wuliuju cooked it especially well and visitors to Hangzhou boasted of having eaten it, that by the Qianlong years the cooking had lost its flavour and many people turned away, yet it was still unmatched elsewhere. A second entry, on vinegar fish with a handle, records that when West Lake restaurants served the dish, another bowl came up with it.