Nanjing's signature dish is salted pressed duck — brine-cured and steamed, with creamy skin and dense, flavourful meat. It is sold at restaurants and takeaway counters across the city but the best versions come from the old shops around the Confucius Temple area. Alongside duck, look for duck blood and vermicelli soup (鸭血粉丝汤), a Nanjing street staple eaten at breakfast by half the city.
The Fuzimiao area along the Qinhuai River is the food heart of old Nanjing. Dozens of restaurants serving Jiangsu cuisine line the riverfront, and the surrounding lanes hold good street food stalls and specialist shops selling pressed tofu, sesame-paste pancakes, and sugar-fried chestnuts. The area is tourist-friendly but not a tourist trap — local families eat here too.
Ninghai Lu is the place for cheap, casual meals — dumplings, steamed buns, hand-pulled noodles, and freshly baked sesame pastries at prices aimed at students and office workers. Along Hunan Lu, multiple restaurants specialise in jiaozi (dumplings) in various styles — one of the better ones has been making them in the same spot since the 1980s.
For Jiangsu regional cooking beyond Nanjing duck, seek out braised lion's head meatballs, river crab in autumn (September to November), and water shield soup — all local specialties that appear on menus around Gulou and Xinjiekou. The upmarket end of Nanjing dining clusters in the Deji Plaza area near Xinjiekou, where multi-storey restaurant complexes cover everything from dim sum to modern Chinese.