Leanne Kitchen joins local tourists in China’s dreamy city of Hangzhou, where mist-covered hills and the watercoloured West Lake set the scene for the region’s renowned cuisine.

Snacks and Street Food A consequence of Hangzhou’s relative sanitisation is the absence of street food vendors cluttering sidewalks, generally a gastronomic highlight of any Chinese city. Street-style food does exist, but you have to seek it. For the most famous noodles in town, Kui Yuan Guan (154 Jiefang Rd) is the ticket. Established over 150 years ago, it seats 800 diners and hand-makes toothsome, fine-textured noodles. They’re most famous for their eel-based soup noodle dishes, and their pian’er chaun, where pork, bamboo shoots and preserved vegetables are combined to utterly sublime effect. Zhi Wei Guan (83 Renhe Rd) is one of Hangzhou’s oldest restaurant businesses and it’s rather grand and fancy. At ground level they have a canteen-style eatery where you can recharge on varieties of steamed buns, dumplings, rice porridge, sweets and noodles that include mao er duo or ‘cat’s ear’ noodles. Shaped like orecchiette, these come floating in a wondrous chicken-y, ham-y broth. On the street, there’s a take-out set-up selling their delicious range of homemade cakes. At Guangfu Lu Food Street (near No. 88 Hefang St) you can sample bites from all over China, cheaply, from a series of small stalls. Join the happy throngs downing whole, spice-encrusted grilled squid, portions of ‘beggar’s chicken’ (stuffed, clay-baked chicken), dong po rou (braised pork belly), steamed rabbit heads, lotus root starch soup (said to be great for the skin) and rice cooked in fragrant lotus leaves, among other snacks. Look out for suo yi bing, also called Wu Hill Cakes. Slightly conical, slightly sweet and unique to Hangzhou, these comprise fine, crisp layers of fried dough and are named after the hill abutting Hefang Street.

Dining Out Longjing Manor (399 Longjing Rd) is one of China’s premier food destinations, never-mind Hangzhou’s. Chef Zhu Yinfeng is famed for his daily, organic farm-to-plate menu fashioned from locally-sourced produce and home-made ingredients. The restaurant enjoys a serene setting, overlooking tea plantations in the hills surrounding Hangzhou. There’s not much English spoken and the bill will make your eyes water but it’s worth any inconvenience, or credit card blow-out. Lakeside, the Four Seasons‘ Jin Sha restaurant (5 Lingyin Rd) is a predictably elegant diner. Their Shanghainese head chef Wang Yong injects his own spin into favourites from his home, rendering the famous hong shao (red-cooked) pork belly even more sumptuous with the addition of braised abalone and sweet soy. Chicken is free-range, pork is sourced from small-scale producers and vegetables are organic where possible. This fastidiousness translates to exquisite food and queues out the door on the weekend.

One of many pretty walkways over West Lake

A waiter eats lunch

Sights and diversions Much of the West Lake, the main reason to visit Hangzhou, was artificially formed through dredging over 1000 years ago. With its surrounding cloud-cloaked hills, various islands, causeways and shoreline dotted with temples, pavilions, gardens, bamboo groves and pagodas, it presents an idealised landscape of mesmerising beauty. In 2011 UNESCO inscribed the lake on its World Heritage List as a cultural landscape. Spring is the best time to visit – when the weather settles, days are long and pink peach blossoms are everywhere. One of the prettiest corners is Flower Harbour, encompassing walkways, bridges, old villas, a spectacular red carp pond and peony garden. The nearby gorgeously tree-lined and nearly 3km-long Su Causeway is punctuated with arched bridges and traverses the lake from north to south making for an invigorating walk. To escape crowds head to the Yang Gong Causeway on the less touristy western shores of the lake, built during the Ming Dynasty. When you’ve had enough lake, taxi out to the peaceful Yunqi Bamboo Path, a gorgeous walking path that cuts a swathe through some of the oldest trees in Hangzhou. One of the best ways to wind down a day is at Chen Huang Pavilion, a reconstruction of the old City God Temple that occupies a prominent hill overlooking the lake. There’s a teahouse built into one of its seven stories and chilling out on the balcony over a pot of Hangzhou’s finest tea and watching the light fade is magical. Feet sore? Sannana Foot Massage (46 Kaiyuan Rd) has affordable 90-minute reflexology sessions in lovely surrounds, and can realign wonky qi (energy balance).