Shaoxing cuisine is shaped by the city's two great products: yellow rice wine and fermented preserved vegetables. The wine is used in virtually every braised and stewed dish, and the result is a characteristic warmly flavoured, slightly sweet profile that distinguishes Shaoxing cooking from the lighter styles of coastal Zhejiang. The preserved vegetables — meiganai, a sun-dried and fermented mustard green — add a deep savoury note to meat dishes, and the combination of pork belly braised with meiganai and Shaoxing wine is one of the essential dishes of eastern Chinese cooking.
The restaurants in the Lu Xun quarter cater primarily to tourist groups and serve competent versions of the classic dishes — zaorou (pork marinated in wine lees), braised chicken in Shaoxing wine, 臭豆腐 (stinky tofu, Shaoxing's distinctive fermented preparation), and the various small snack dishes that Lu Xun's characters eat in the old wine shops he describes. For more genuine cooking, the back-street restaurants south of the old city near the rice wine distilleries serve better food at lower prices to a local clientele.