Nanjing's brand of Jiangsu cuisine favors freshwater fish and shrimp as well as duck and various types of tofu; rice is the primary grain, and a fine range of vegetables, fruits and mushrooms are used to create light, clear soups, delicately flavored fish dishes and elegantly carved presentations of melons and other fruits and vegetables. The emphasis is on letting flavors through, with seasoning serving to delicately enhance main ingredients; accents tend toward the salty and sweet. 

Nanjing specialties include yanshui ya (salted duck), prepared in a way that makes for a surprisingly light bird, less greasy than usual; gan si (shredded tofu skin), a cold dish in which sheets of slightly chewy dofu are finely chopped with vegetables, bamboo shoots, mushrooms and chicken or pork; and qing tang ba zhen ("eight delicacies soup"), a delightful blend that includes fish, water chestnuts, lotus root, arrowroot and lotus seeds. 

For light bites between meals, try Jinling snacks ("Jinling" being an old name for Nanjing, a name that lives on as the name of the local beer), lightly fried green onion pancakes, hun tun (wonton) and dumpling soups and fried guotie pork dumpling, to name just a few. Nanjing is also home to a number of reputable international restaurants, from pizzerias and burger joints to Italian, Japanese, Indian and Mexican restaurants. 

The Shizi Qiao pedestrian zone just west of Xuanwu Park is a great place to find a wide variety of cuisines, as is the area between Nanjing University and Nanjing Normal University just west of the Zhujiong Lu metro station. Other good hunting grounds are, in the center of the city, around the Xinjiekou metro stop and to the south, the Fuzi Miao (Confucian Temple) neighborhood.