Mount Tai Cuisine

It is the perfect match for Mount Tai Jianbing pancakes. This dish is different from the tofu in the Three Delicacies of Mount Tai. It is a home-style dish cooked with wild mountain vegetables, vegetable stalks and soaked soybean kernels. Popular ingredients include radish tops, cabbage ribs, cauliflower leaves and other seasonal greens.

Every family in old Tai’an had its own unique recipe and flavour. The main ingredients are pork with skin, kelp, lotus root and Chinese cabbage.

Mount Tai features rolling mountains with mild climate and abundant water. A wide variety of Chinese herbal medicines grow in its dense forests. Signature dishes include medicinal herb chicken, steamed chicken with ganoderma lucidum, steamed duck with ganoderma lucidum, mutton stew with fleeceflower root, steamed chicken with four-leaf ginseng, polygonatum soup with rock sugar, pork knuckle stewed with ginkgo nuts, and almond tofu.

They refer to Chinese cabbage, tofu and mountain spring water. The cabbage used is Mount Tai yellow-sprout cabbage. The tofu is curdled with gypsum, and the water is fresh spring water from Mount Tai. People often say that a trip to Mount Tai is incomplete without tasting this dish. You can enjoy the fresh and tasty Three Delicacies Tofu both in high-end restaurants and street eateries. Other popular tofu snacks widely available include tofu balls, pan-fried tofu, casserole tofu, creamy tofu soup, braised tofu, mutton tofu stew, and scrambled eggs with tofu.

Recommendation: It is best to taste this dish near the foothills or beside mountain springs along the hiking trail. You can also dine at Mount Tai Restaurant. Although the price is relatively high, it serves authentic local dishes.

The feast consists of cold dishes, deep-fried dishes, stir-fried egg dishes, pickled vegetables and soups. The most famous ones are shepherd’s purse with ginger sauce and fried lotus leaf rolls.

Recommendation: This dish is served in most restaurants across Tai’an. For authentic flavours, choose larger restaurants. If you want to buy fresh ingredients to cook yourself, head to South Gate Market south of the inn. All kinds of seasonal wild vegetables are sold there, freshly picked by mountain villagers early in the morning.

The main raw materials are millet or corn, and millet makes the finest pancakes. The batter undergoes fermentation before baking, creating two flavours: sour and sweet-and-sour. Mount Tai Jianbing is as thin as cicada wings and nearly transparent. A pancake 70 centimetres in diameter weighs only about 50 grams.

Popular snacks made with Jianbing include stuffed savoury pancakes (filled with green onion, tofu or cabbage) and crispy sugar pancakes baked with millet flour and white sugar. Jianbing rolled with green Chinese onions is a well-known street food loved by all ages.

Recommendation: For personal consumption, buy pancakes from stalls at the west entrance of Wazi Street. These vendors have run their businesses for more than ten years and sell genuine daily food for local residents. If you need packaged gifts for friends, go to Uni-President Ginza north of the east entrance of the inn.

This rare fish is unique to Mount Tai. Though small in size, it has tender, delicious flesh with few bones and no fishy odour, plus high nutritional value. It can be blanched or deep-fried. The most famous dish is Dragon and Phoenix Pearl Soup. Classic preparations include deep-fried red-scale fish, plain-boiled red-scale fish and phoenix-tailed red-scale fish.

Recommendation: Visit East Imperial Trail on the eastern foot of Mount Tai. A fish that costs 30 yuan in downtown restaurants only costs around 12 yuan here. You can watch the fish being caught live from the pond and cooked right away. A full range of wild mountain vegetables are also available