Why is Hangzhou cuisine not popular across the country?

I talked with a friend

The trend in restaurants in the future is that those with a low budget can only eat pre-made dishes, and it is enough for the restaurant to have a microwave and dishwasher.

The higher the per capita rate is, the more you can eat freshly cooked food by the chef, and the quality will be very wide.

Back to Hangzhou cuisine, as an enclave of Henan cuisine, it incorporates some characteristics of Huaiyang cuisine.

For example, Longjing shrimps, most Internet celebrity stores serve dry ice, and the presentation is more beautiful. Bring some tea soup, and then dip it in a sweet and sour sauce. The taste of the sauce is all over when you dip it, and the shrimps are also soft. Lie down, more abstract. As for the serious way of making Longjing shrimps, even some relatively traditional restaurants (Louwailou, Zhiweiguan) cannot do it all, and some steps will be omitted. You can refer to the old cooking videos on station B.

Furthermore, the West Lake vinegar fish has been criticized. Many people do not like the seasoning of the sauce, and some people question the earthy smell of grass carp. Because the traditional West Lake vinegar fish is made from grass carp, it needs to be raised in water for several days to remove the smell, which is not possible now. If you want to avoid the earthy smell, you can only add mandarin fish for more money.

Even if standards are set, it will still be expensive if you really want to eat it. It is relatively reasonable to set a standard for Hangbang cuisine's pre-prepared dishes, similar to the pre-prepared dishes of Louwailou and Zhiweiguan, which actually taste good and taste better than those of many listed companies.

Let’s expand on the West Lake vinegar fish to talk about authenticity and deliciousness.

Many people find the West Lake Vinegar Fish made from mandarin fish unpalatable even if they eat it because they can’t get used to the sweet and sour sauce. This is because the method of preparing the sweet and sour sauce is authentic and traditional. In that era when there were not many additives, this was how the sweet and sour sauce of West Lake Sour Fish was prepared.

But does authentic food have to be delicious? not necessarily.

It is very difficult to find a balance between tradition and acceptance by today's people.

There was a Western restaurant in a hotel in Hangzhou that had a German menu before. I didn’t know that when I went there, but when I arrived it was said that German dishes were now available, so I ordered some to try. The sausages were okay and the ingredients were relatively good. In fact, it tasted good, but there was a dish of sauerkraut and pork knuckle that no one at the table was used to. When it came to asking the chef about our dining experience, we told him the truth. As a result, the chef came up and said, this is the authentic German way of cooking. The problem is that the number of people who come to eat at your place for an authentic German experience is far less than the number of people who come for a delicious Western meal. In my opinion, it is worthwhile to make corresponding improvements to the dishes according to the target group, both in terms of customer dining experience and restaurant evaluation.

Finally, let’s talk about the food desert in Hangzhou. I have been to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Ningbo. The most obvious thing I feel is that Nanjing and Guangzhou have done a good job in promoting food, and they don’t cost much. You can eat authentic local food for money, and some relatively traditional street snacks in Shanghai have also been preserved.

In comparison, the threshold for admission in Beijing, Shenzhen and Hangzhou is much higher. The positioning of Shenzhen as an immigrant city determines its characteristics of integration and tolerance. Some old restaurants in Hangzhou and Beijing have been preserved, but there is a certain threshold for experience. The development of the city has allowed them to have many creative dishes, fusion dishes, and improved dishes, but the threshold is even higher. high. At the same time, high housing prices and the Internet celebrity economy have caused many traditional street snacks to disappear. Some cannot survive, and some have lost themselves in the process of opening chains. If you want to eat, you can only go to scenic spots, and what you eat is beyond your imagination. It's not the same thing at all, and that's the problem. For example, when I was a kid, there was a restaurant near the Huansha Road fire station that made delicious braised tofu. Business was booming every day, and then it disappeared.

How to make food popular is more meaningful than setting standards.