Zhongshan cooking sits firmly within the Cantonese tradition but has a few specialities worth seeking out. The most famous is roast suckling pigeon (脆皮乳鸽), which the city claims to have invented in the 1930s and which still appears on most local restaurant menus — Shiqi roast pigeon is a regional benchmark. Dim sum is taken seriously, with the morning yum cha sessions in the larger Shiqi restaurants running until early afternoon.
For solid local cooking, the streets around Sunwen West Road and the old Shiqi quarter are the obvious hunting ground. For dim sum, the older hotel restaurants and the Shiqi Lao-style local houses are the standard recommendations. Cheap eats and night-market food cluster around the Yantai Garden bridge and along the Qijiang river embankment in the evenings.