To be pedantic, there are several cuisines in Taiwan. In addition to the following representative dishes from the Ho-lo ethnicity (see Taiwanese language), there are also aboriginal, Hakka, and local derivatives of Chinese cuisines (one famous example of the last is beef noodle soup = niurou mian = gu-bah mi).

Famous dishes in each of the main cities
Taichung
Sun cake is the most noted food in Taichung.

Tainan
There are pork foot, tann-ah noodle, shrimp cookie and so on.

Exemplar dishes
jiu-hi ken (youyu geng = 魷魚羹) - Soup with cuttlefish wrapped in fish paste.

Szechuan Cuisine or Sichuan Cuisine (川菜, pinyin: chuan1 cai4), originating in the Sichuan province of western China, has an international reputation for being spicy and flavorful.

Some well-known Szechuan dishes include "Kung Pao Chicken" and "Twice Cooked Pork". Although many Szechuan dishes live up to their spicy reputation, often ignored are the large percentage of recipes that use little or no spice at all, including recipes such as "Tea Smoked Duck".

What many do not realize is that the chili pepper, a common ingredient in Szechuan cuisine (often used unseeded), was only introduced to China following Columbus's discovery of the New World. Chili peppers were perhaps introduced to the remote Szechuan province by Western missionaries. Previous Szechuan cuisine was not completely without spice, however. Szechuan pepper is an indigenous plant (fruit) that produces a milder spice, and is still a key ingredient in Szechuan food to this day. The reason for this emphasis on spice may derive from the region's warm, humid climate. This climate also necessitates sophisticated food-preservation techniques which include pickling, salting, drying and smoking

Shanghai cuisine, known as Hu cai (滬菜 in pinyin: hu4 cai4) among the Chinese, is one of the most popular and celebrated cuisines in China.

Shanghai does not have a definitive cuisine of its own, but refines those of the surrounding provinces (mostly from adjacent Jiangsu and Zhejiang coastal provinces). What can be called Shanghai cuisine is epitomized by the use of alcohol. Fish, eel, crab, chicken are "drunken" with spirits and usually served raw. Salted meats and preserved vegetables are also commonly used to spice up the dish.

The use of sugar is very unique to Shanghainese cuisine and, especially when used in combination with soy sauce, effuses foods and sauces with a taste that is not so much sweet but rather savory. A typical Shanghai household will consume sugar at the same rate as soy sauce, even excluding pastry baking. Non-natives tend to have difficulty identifying this usage of sugar and are often surprised when told of the "secret ingredient."

Mandarin cuisine refers to cooking style in Beijing, China. It is known as jing1 cai4 (京菜) among Chinese.

Since Beijing has been the Chinese capital city for centuries, its cuisine was influenced by people from all over China. The Emperor's Kitchen was a term referring to the cooking places inside of the Forbidden City of Beijing where thousands of cooks from the different parts of China showed their best cooking skills to please royal families and officials. Therefore, it is at times rather difficult to tell determine the actual origin of a dish as the term "Mandarin" is generalized and refers not only to Beijing, but other provinces as well.

Hunan Cuisine, sometimes called Xiang Cuisine (湘菜 pinyin xiang1 cai4), consists of the cuisines of the Xiangjiang region, Dongting Lake and western Hunan Province, in China.

While similar to Szechuan cuisine, Hunan Cuisine is often spicier and contains a larger variety of ingredients. Hunan is known for its liberal use of chilli peppers, shallots and garlic. Many Hunan dishes are characterized by a strongly flavored brown sauce. Some rely on sweetness from ingredients such as honey; sweet and sour sauces are also characteristic of the style.

Hunan cuisine is difficult to precisely characterize, as it has absorbed stylistic elements from all over China. For this reason, the region is sometimes regarded as China's culinary center. Common cooking techniques include stewing, frying, pot-roasting, braising, and smoking. Due to the high agricultural output of the region, ingredients for Hunan dishes are many and varied.

Hakka people are migratory tribes of ethnic Han people originated from central China. Their ancestors exiled themselves from foreign rulers such as the Mongols in Yuan Dynasty. Due to their late migration to the southern areas of China, they found that all of the best land had been settled long before. The Hakkas then were forced to settle in the sparsely settled hill country.

As a result, fresh produce was at a premium, forcing the Hakkas to heavily utilize dried and preserved ingredients, such as various kinds of fermented beancurd and much use of onion. Due to the hill country being far inland seafood is a rarity. Pork is by far the most favored meat of the Hakkas, with belly bacon being the preferred cut as it has alternating layers of fat and lean meat, providing an excellent texture.

China has one of the richest culinary heritages on Earth. Solid Chinese food is eaten with chopsticks and liquid with a wide, flat bottomed spoon (usually ceramic). Chinese consider having a knife at the table as barbaric, so most dishes are prepared in smaller pieces, ready for direct picking and eating.

Because of the large and varied nature of China itself, Chinese cuisine can be broken down into very many different regional styles.

Chinese Buddhist cuisine
Cantonese cuisine
Chiuchow cuisine
Hakka cuisine
Hunan cuisine
Chinese Islamic cuisine
Mandarin cuisine
Shanghai cuisine
Szechuan cuisine

Chopsticks, a pair of small tapered sticks, are the traditional eating utensils of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam (the four "Chopstick countries"). Chopsticks are commonly made of wood, bamboo, metal, bone, ivory, and in modern times, plastic as well.

Names

"Chopstick" is the pidgin-English and English name for the tools. "Chop" is pidgin-English for "quick", the Mandarin word for chopsticks being kuàizi (筷子) or kuài'er (筷兒), meaning "the bamboo-objects for eating quickly". However, originally in Classical Chinese and some older literature, they are zhù (箸), possibly just a phonetic character that merely indicates that the object is made of bamboo.

Chiuchow cuisine or Chaozhou cuisine originates from Chiuchow, a city of China in the Guangdong Province, not far from Canton. Hence the cooking style is very similar to Cantonese cuisine. However, Chiuchow cuisine does have some unique dishes that are not in Cantonese cuisine.

Chiuchow cuisine is known for serving rice soup, in addition to steamed rice with meals, which is quite different from Cantonese porridge or congee which is very thick and gluey. The Chiuchow rice soup is very watery with the rice sitting loosely at the bottom of the bowl. Authentic Chiuchow restaurants serve very strong oolong tea in very tiny cups before and after the meal.

Jiu (酒; pinyin jiu3) is the Chinese word that refers to all alcoholic beverages. Many Chinese wines are made from grains and herbs and distilled to high concentration. Chinese wines from southern China are mostly made of rice, those from northern China are mostly made of wheat and sorghum. Most are colorless clear liquid unless other herbs are added to give a different color.

Name of some famous Chinese liquors, wines:

Fen jiu (汾酒) - this wine was dated back to Northern and Southern Dynasties (550 A.D.). It is the original Chinese white wine made from sorghum. Alcohol content by volume: 63-65%.

Due to a large Muslim population in western China, many Chinese restaurants cater to Muslims or cater to the general public but are run by Muslims.

A Chinese Islamic restaurant (清真菜館) can sometimes be similar to a Mandarin restaurant with the exception that there is no pork in the menu.

In most major cities in China, there are small Islamic restaurants typicially run by migrants from Western China (i.e. Uighurs), which offer inexpensive noodle soup. These restaurants are typically decorated with Islamic motifs such as pictures of Islamic rugs and Arabic writing.

Cantonese cuisine originates from the region around Canton in southern China's Guangdong province.

There is a Cantonese saying: "We eat everything on the ground with four legs except tables and chairs. We eat everything in the sky except airplanes." [1] Cantonese cuisine includes almost all edible food in addition to the staples of pork, beef and chicken -- snakes, snails, insects, worms, chicken feet, duck tongues, ox genitals, and entrails. A subject of controversy amongst Westerners, dogs are raised as food in some places in China, though this is not a common food you find in restaurants, and is illegal in Hong Kong and will soon be in Taiwan.

Buddhist cuisine is known as 齋菜 (pinyin: zhai caì) among Chinese.

One basic tenet of Buddhism is that of reincarnation and there is a belief that animals can been reincarnated as humans and vice versa. As a result, many Buddhists do not eat animals because this is considered to be bad for their karma. Compassion for other beings is another common reason.

Buddhist dietary restrictions are structured very differently than those of the Abrahamic religions such as Judaism and Islam. In those religions, the dietary restrictions make a clear distinction between permitted foods and unpermitted foods. By contrast, there is no such clear distinction between permitted and unpermitted foods.