Meituan-Dianping releases food handbook

[Photo: thinkstockphotos.com]

Two years after Michelin debuted its famed restaurant guide on the Chinese mainland, online-to-offline service platform Meituan-Dianping has picked 28 restaurants as "must try once in a lifetime" for its own guide launched on Tuesday in Shanghai.

Dubbed the "Black Pearl", which, like the guide, is painstaking to produce, the list recommends 330 restaurants from 27 cities known as culinary destinations. Five of the cities are overseas including New York, Paris and Tokyo.

Apart from the 28 restaurants awarded three diamonds, 85 are given two diamonds, which means "must try on an occasion", and 217 one diamond, meaning "must try for a casual gathering". The restaurants charge 677 yuan ($105) per capita on average.

"Black Pearl is not trying to be the Chinese version of the Michelin guide, but aims to be a world-class list compiled by Chinese and for Chinese palates," said Zhang Chuan, vice-president of the company, which is headquartered in Shanghai. 

[The audio clip is from Studio+, produced by CRI] 

(News source: China Daily)