New twist to traditional favorites
People queue up to buy zongzi at the Sunya Cantonese Restaurant.
Ahead of the Dragon Boat Festival on June 7, a zongzi "battle" is underway with time-honored brands giving glutinous rice dumplings, traditional seasonal delicacies, a novel twist to attract customers.
New flavors such as salted egg yolk, truffle, abalone, beef and crayfish have been added to the festival staple to tempt young diners in particular. Some are already proving popular.
Sunya Cantonese Restaurant on Nanjing Road Pedestrian Mall, which dates back to 1926, has developed several new types of zongzi this year.
One is stuffed with truffles, abalone and roast pork, while another contains eight ingredients such as scallops, bamboo shoots, fish maw and dried shrimp.
"These two are Sunya's signature dishes, which inspired the innovation," said executive chef Huang Renkang.
Customers buy zongzi at the Sunya Cantonese Restaurant.
Satay sauce beef and chestnut and mushroom zongzi are also on offer. The restaurant is also developing zongzi filled with crayfish, cheese, salted egg yolk, crab meat, fish roe and Perigord truffles.
"This is the most challenging one because we want to keep the flavor of shisanxiang crayfish, but the flavor easily evaporates during the steaming process of zongzi," said Huang. "We are still making trials."
Shisanxiang refers to the sauce that includes 13 different spices, such as aniseed, cumin, cinnamon and ginger.
Nearly 5,000 zongzi have been sold at Sunya every day since May, and the new tastes have been welcomed by young people bored with traditional flavors, said Huang.
Some new flavors are in short supply because of their complex recipes and salty tastes are more popular than sweet ones, Huang said.
Young people like the new flavors but older customers still want the zongzi that remind them of their childhood.
"I am eager to try the crayfish zongzi because I am addicted to crayfish," said Ren Liangliang, a tourist from Henan Province who is in her 20s.
Lin Liwei, another young customer, said: "I have been bored with traditional tastes and the fat meat in zongzi with pork filling is very greasy. New tastes, particularly some wanghong (Internet celebrity) ones, are better."
However, traditional tastes continue to be welcomed by older customers.
"Abalone, crayfish and beef tastes are very strange when combined with zongzi, which I cannot imagine," said Li Hua, a Shanghainese in her 50s who bought two pork meat zongzi at the restaurant.
"My mother made zongzi at home when I was young, and there were always two tastes, pork or no filling, which I ate with white granulated sugar," she said. "For me, the simpler, the better for zongzi.
"The traditional tastes of zongzi remind me of childhood flavors."
The restaurant is also using new ingredients such as a special black glutinous rice made by boiling with the juice of crushed blueberry leaves. The history of the rice dates back to the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907).
It is a tradition to pick the leaves, make the glutinous rice and eat it around the Dragon Boat Festival in Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces.
"The rice represents Jiangnan (areas south of the Yangtze River) flavor," said Huang.
Preserved jujube is added to the zongzi to satisfy sweeter tastes.
Traditional fillings such as pork meat are also on the offer, but the sauce is specially made.
"Shanghainese like thick oil and heavy red sauce, and we tried many sauces to match pork meat to keep the most authentic Shanghai flavor of zongzi," Huang said.
Salted egg yolk is also added to the filling, and each zongzi weighs 280 grams.
The pork is specially chosen. "Compared with traditional pork meat, the meat of Spanish Iberico black pork has a more fragrant smell, tender taste and richer flavor," said Huang. "The fat is not greasy as well."
The development of new tastes began more than two months ago with repeated development and adjustment of the recipe, said Huang.
“The ingredients, weight and shape of zongzi are all new and innovation is important for time-honored brands, and we are receiving more youngsters thanks to these innovations," he said.
Prices for the restaurant's zongzi range from 6 yuan to 29 yuan each (80 US cents to US$4) depending on size and ingredients.
Sunya has also developed a durian zongzi.
At Xing Hua Lou in Huangpu District, typical and classical Suzhou-style dishes are made into fillings. These include pork with fermented bean curd, steamed pork with preserved vegetables and salt meat with bean.
The time-honored brand that dates back to 1851 also offers sweet zongzi filled with adzuki beans, red bean paste and jujube.
The city's time-honored brands have been introducing many new approaches to traditional seasonal foods such as qingtuan (green glutinous rice balls) filled with shredded chicken and bacon, and salted egg yolk and dried meat floss, as well as mooncakes with yanduxian (a typical Shanghai soup with pork and bamboo shoots), barbecued pork and crab meat fillings.
These offerings have attracted many diners. Customers were queuing for up to eight hours to buy qingtuan filled with salted egg yolk and dried meat floss made by Xing Hua Lou.
