Surprise honor

Lao Zheng Xing restaurant in Shanghai is known for its signature dishes like 18-second shrimp and red-braised pig intestine. It's the only State-owned eatery in the city to be honored by the Michelin Guide. The restaurant has been packed to capacity since the award. GAO ERQIANG/CHINA DAILY

"No one makes them better than us," says Hu Bing, executive chef of Lao Zheng Xing. It's an unusual boast－Chinese chefs are a humble breed and famously discreet. "I am not saying this simply to express our pride in our status as a veteran among restaurants."

In fact, the restaurant is not a veteran at preparing the shrimps alone, it also makes a red-braised pig intestine with alfalfa sprouts, another signature dish. Lao Zheng Xing invented them.

Founded in 1862, about two decades after Shanghai became a treaty port and came to enjoy roaring prosperity, Lao Zheng Xing was launched as a humble eatery by Zhu Zhengxing and Cai Renxing, from whom it gained the name.

Knowing barely anything about cooking, the two entrepreneurs from Ningbo in neighboring Zhejiang province met a chef from Wuxi, Jiangsu province, after their first joint venture－a grocery store－failed. They decided to try their luck again.

The Xi cuisine of Wuxi is famously sweet, and the restaurant created a hybrid of those dishes with the coarser, oilier dishes of nearby Anhui's Hui cuisine, which had been dominant because it was accessible and went well with rice, the local staple.