In the heart of Foshan, one off-the-beaten-track restaurant is quietly reviving ancient Cantonese culinary traditions and almost-forgotten dishes
In 2006, when Xu Jingye and Yao Min started 102 House, a one-table private kitchen focusing on Cantonese cuisine in the city of Foshan, about an hour west of Guangzhou, they looked to Hong Kong for knowledge and inspiration. They decided to claim their venture as “fusion”—an experiment in blending Guangdong’s traditions with those of their plusher neighbour. “It was so-called creative cuisine,” recalls Xu, “but customers weren’t returning. We knew that what we were doing wasn’t right.”
Looking to hone the recipes they were playing with, Xu found a sifu, or mentor—a man whose name Xu wouldn’t disclose, who has been a veteran of high-end Cantonese kitchens for decades. Under his guidance, the chef and his partner Yao, both in their 30s, began shifting their attention to Cantonese cuisine in its purest, oldest form.
“Neither of us was born in the age when Cantonese cuisine was at its most glorious,” Xu says. “We never experienced it, so our knowledge and understanding of Cantonese classics was the same as most other people, in that we didn’t know much about them. My sifu had worked in grand hotels in the 1960s and cooked dishes that I’d never seen or tasted before. He suggested that I start again and learn the fundamentals of Cantonese cuisine.”
So Xu did. He started digging up old recipes and cookbooks and began to try his hand at reproducing them, from tiny coins of chicken minced by hand on top of pig skin to incorporate a little of the fattiness, designed to float in a milky, slow-cooked tonic soup of black chicken and almonds, to pigeon breast steamed with shiitake that had been allowed to grow past their prime.
“I would go straight to my sifu if there was something I didn’t understand and he would teach me, step by step. He taught me how the dish should taste, what its true point of difference is and how to achieve it. In those early days, we really relied on him to help us find our bearings,” Xu says. “He made me understand what Cantonese food is really about. Cantonese food is clean, umami, crunchy, tender, smooth (‘qing, xian, shuang, nen, hua’), and you should achieve these qualities using the vegetables that nature provides through the seasons. When you fully understand these concepts, you’ll understand Cantonese food.”