Nanjing has a relatively wide selection of local, regional Chinese and foreign foods, often at reasonable prices. Traditional Nanjing cuisine is known as Jin Su cuisine and is notable for the emphasis placed on original flavor and carefully selected raw ingredients. Nanjing dishes are traditionally bright in color and use only a moderate amount of seasoning but a significant amount of oil.

The characteristics of flavor lie in its mellow taste, neither too salty nor too light, which suits the appetite of everybody. The sumptuous course preserves its natural flavor with fresh and good smell, crisp, soft and tender tastes as its main features.

Jin Su specialties that should be sampled include: Jinling roast duck, steamed duck cutlets, salted duck, Longchi carp and "Eight delicacies soup". The "Eight delicacies" are: fish, water chestnut, lotus root, vine, parsley, arrowroot and lotus seeds. This is a popular dish especially around "Moon Festival" time (roughly around the middle of August). There are numerous classical restaurants serving up these delicacies and the area around the Confucius Temple has some great places to taste good Nanjing food.

Western and Japanese food is also becoming increasingly popular and there is a good selection of Western and Chinese food available around the universities off Shanghai Lu. Of course, the big hotels such as The Hilton and The Jinling also have good restaurants. McDonalds and KFC are hugely popular here.

There are, in particular, a number of places around the Nanjing University Foreign Students' Residence that cater to Western palates. Otherwise Xinjiekou and Confucius Temple are generally good districts to browse for restaurants. For standard Chinese snacks - noodles, Sichuan hotpot, jiaozi and wonton soup - promising areas include Ninghai Lu, just north from the main entrance of the Normal University, the area just west of Fuzi Miao, and the area immediately southeast of Xinjiekou.

Nanjing is an ideal place to sample Jiangsu cuisine, most notably yanshui ya (salted duck), so renowned that it has now become a country-wide favourite. Other Jiangsu dishes worth trying include majiang yaopian (pork intestines), jiwei xia (a lake crustacean vaguely resembling a lobster, but much better tasting, locals affirm) and paxiang jiao (a type of vegetable that resembles banana leaves). The best areas of town to sample Jiangsu food are in the north of town, north of Gulou along Zhongyang Lu and northwest along Zhongshan Bei Lu.

Dried Salted Duck
Nanjing is famous for its dried salted duck both at home and abroad, which has its market in Hong Kong and southeastern region. The characteristics of the Nanjing dried salted duck, apart from its plumpness in appearance, lies in its rich delicacy with white tender skin, tasting crisp, fragrant, pressed soft and aftertaste everlasting.

Salt Solution Duck
It tastes oily but not greasy. The duck is first pressed and salted, then steeped in brine and baked - the skin should be creamy-coloured and the flesh red and tender. It is characterized as good smell, crisp and tender.

Jinling Snacks
Nanjing Confucian temple is the place of origin of Jinling snacks, which has a long history and a great variety of snacks. With the development of the municipal construction, the network of snacks has increasingly been developed. Apart from the Confucian Temple area, places of light refreshments and snacks have gradually come into being in a rather compact way, in Xinjiekou, Changle Road, Shanxi Road, Zhongyangmen, etc. there are such well-known snack stores as Liu Feng Ju (for jellied bean curd, green onion pancake), Qin yuan Chun (Wan Ton), dumpling soup, (flour-light refreshments), Lian Hu Sweet Snack Store (cake in Russian style) etc.