‘I’m so spoilt living in Guangzhou,’ says Wai Zhou, founder of Eating Adventures and a local foodie champion. ‘The cuisine here is the finest in all of China.’ The old Chinese saying ‘Be born in Suzhou, live in Hangzhou, eat in Guangzhou, die in Liuzhou’ suggests that she’s not the only one to think so highly of restaurants in Guangzhou.

Zhou and I are having dinner at Bingsheng Zen Tea House, a cute vegetarian restaurant on the cusp of Xiaogang Park. It’s my third meal in Guangzhou, and the tastiest I’ve had all weekend. Which is quite a statement, given I’ve had lashings of dim sum and cheung fan (a Cantonese delicacy of steamed rice noodle rolls), washed down with all kinds of exotic tea.

Guangzhou – formerly Canton – is the capital of Guangdong province, and the spiritual home of Cantonese cuisine (sorry, Hong Kong). As Guangzhou welcomed its first Michelin Guide at the end of June 2018, it’s finally getting the official recognition it deserves.

And thanks to a high level of domestic migration over the past few decades – some estimates put the number of Chinese from other provinces as high as five million –Guangzhou’s food scene is not just limited to Cantonese cuisine. You’ll find that the city is laced with restaurants serving dishes from provinces as far away as Sichuan and Xinjiang.

Here’s a selection of the best restaurants in Guangzhou.