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A taste of Nanjing

Plum Garden

梅苑

Open since 1983 on the second floor of the Jinling Hotel, Plum Garden is where Nanjing's own establishment goes for Huaiyang food, and it is the restaurant the MICHELIN Guide names when it writes about the city's salted duck. The duck is cured and brined daily, then deboned and sliced to order: skin the colour of porcelain over pale pink meat, served cold. If you only eat salted duck once, eat it here rather than from a street stall.

¥¥¥ on the MICHELIN price scale (upper-middle band); exact per-head price unconfirmedMichelin Selected 2026Gulou district, 2F Jinling Hotel, 2 Hanzhong Road.
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Why come here

A place worth making time for

MICHELIN Selected in the MICHELIN Guide Shanghai | Jiangsu | Zhejiang 2026, and named by the MICHELIN Guide's own Nanjing food feature as its salted duck recommendation. Trading since 1983

The house favourites

What to order

Point at the Chinese. Staff will understand it even where the menu has no English at all.

  • Salted duck, the Nanjing dish (盐水鸭)
  • Braised pork meatball with crab roe (蟹粉狮子头)
  • Fried eel braised with pork belly and pigeon eggs (软兜长鱼)

What it actually tastes like

Salted duck is served cold, chopped through the bone, and is salty and faintly floral rather than roasted — foreign diners who expect something like Peking duck are consistently thrown by it. Crab roe is rich and faintly bitter. Eel appears as a mainstream ingredient.

Allergens in this kitchen

shellfishfishsoygluten/wheatsesameegg

This is the kitchen, not one dish. Woks, fryers, blanching water and utensils are shared in almost every Chinese restaurant, so for a serious allergy treat the whole premises as the unit rather than ordering around it.

Get to know the menu

Local specialities to try here

Nanjing salted duck 盐水鸭Cool, firm, gently salty meat with a faintly sweet, perfumed finish and soft translucent skin; not greasy at all.Lion's head meatball 狮子头Extremely soft, juicy and mild, almost custardy; the broth around it is clean rather than rich.