Songhelou is the most famous restaurant in Suzhou and has been operating for over three hundred years, making it one of the oldest continuously running restaurants in China. The current building on Taiian Lane near the Xuanmiao Temple is not the original, but the recipes are — or at least claim to be. The menu centres on classic Suzhou dishes: squirrel-shaped Mandarin fish (a whole fish deep-fried and curved into a squirrel shape then doused in sweet-and-sour sauce), braised pork with crab roe, and various preparations of fresh lake fish.
The restaurant is large, popular, and has been updated for tourists without abandoning its culinary identity. Prices are in the upper-middle range for Suzhou. Come for lunch rather than dinner if you want to eat without waiting; evenings can mean hour-long queues in season. The squirrel fish is worth ordering once even if you find Suzhou's characteristic sweetness not quite to your taste — it's the dish that most clearly defines what the kitchen is trying to do.