Dali food

Dali is famous for its snack food. After dusk falls, many old lanes are lined with food stalls open until midnight. There are a great variety of delicious snacks in Dali. You can wander along until you see one you like.

 

Famous Dali Dishes

 

Dali Bittern Duck
This is a top choice among tourists. Fresh duck from Lashi Lake is served in a thick golden sauce. Besides its great taste, it is said to be very healthy.

 

Roasted Bean Curd
Roasted bean curd is a favorite local snack. It can be bought at the night market, but he best is made in Shiping County and Jianshui County. Made from high quality soybeans, the bean curd smell often turns people off, but many consider it to be quite tasty. Roasted on a steel net by a charcoal fire, and seasoned with spiced salt water, hot pepper powder, and Chinese ash oil, the snack is crisp and fresh.

 

Dali Rice Cake
During the Spring Festival, people in Dali are accustomed to eating rice cakes. Sliced, and mixed with ham slices, pickled vegetables, and hot peppers, before being fried with pig fat and seasoned with sugar and sauce, the rice cakes are a traditional delicacy. They are soft, and tasty. Rice cakes can be fried, boiled, stewed, or roasted and each way produces its own unique flavor.

 

Best Restaurant in Dali Old Town

 

Plum Well Restaurant
Located near the grocery market of Dali old town, difficult to find, you might need to ask local people.  It is a family style restaurant, offer all types of local dishes.

 

The restaurant is named  MeiZhiJin in Chinese, Meizhi is the name for plum, Jin is the name for well in Chinese.  Meizhijin Restaurant is famous for two things: The Plum wine and the ancient well.

 

Beatiful surrounding of flowers and trees decorate the restaurant, brick carvings of figurines on the wall are lifelike, possessing both the common features of figure creation in Dali and the unique features of the Bai artists, with bow-shaped crossbeams, bracket-inserted columns, and gargoyles representing people, flowers and birds created with the open carving method, shows the excellent workmanship of the Bai people.

 

The plum wines served in this restaurant are home-made, known as the best in the town.  We are told that the secret is the water, digging from an ancient well in the courtyard.  The plum wine is tasty and sweet, easy to drink more with delicious Dailly local foods, while you are sharing personal experience, local stories with the restaurant owners, eventually you will get lost in the lazy atmosphere.