The Cantonese cuisine is one of the four schools of Chinese cooking. It can be divided into Guangzhou style, Chaozhou style, and Haka style, with Guangzhou style as the representative. The Guangzhou style is broad and rare in ingredients, exquisite in matching of ingredients, good at taking initiative after imitation and modifying according to the tastes of guests. The cuisine pays much attention to clearness, freshness, refreshment, smoothness, tenderness, and crispness and particular to smell and presentation. The styles are numerous and complete in flavoring. The Guangzhou style cuisine incorporates the strong points of other schools and keeps on taking initiative, such as Beijing Spareribs, Deep fried Yellow Croaker, Saute Shrimp with Eel, which absorbs the characteristics of Beijing style: Beef on Sizzling Platter, Pork Balls with Hot Spicy Sauce, Sichuan Chicken Cubes, absorbing the characteristics of Sichuan style: Five Spots Fish, Dongpo Pork, and Wineblanched Shrimp, absorbing the characteristics of Zhejiang style: Great-grandfather Chicken, famous in South of the Five Ridges, drawing on the experiences of Anhui style: while the Pork Steak with Watermelon Sauce and Steak with Tomato Sauce are adopted from the western style.

Cantonese cuisine has three wonders: Braised Dog, Salt Baked Sparrow and Snake Soup. The dog selected for “Braised Dog” should have the following features: The head is like an anvil, the ears are like dried orange peel, the legs are like chopsticks and the tail is like a pepper. The dog is braised with dried orange peel, ginger, and straw grass, called “Three treasures of Guangdong”, and other flavorings, After modification, lettuce, purple medic, and garlic are added. If it is eaten with lemon leaves or sea purple medic, a sweet scent will assail the nostrils and it is really delicious. Salt Baked Sparrow means Salt baked Skewbald Sparrow. The meat of this kind of sparrow is very tender and the bone is small. The taste of this dish is delicious. Snake soup refers to “Dragon Fights with Tiger Soup”. The ingredients are cobra, serpentine, old cat, and young chicken. Because snake looks like dragon, cat looks like tiger, and chicken look like phoenix, this dish is also called “Dragon-Tiger-Phoenix Soup”.

Cantonese cuisine originates from the region around Canton in southern China's Guangdong province.

There is a Cantonese saying: "We eat everything on the ground with four legs except tables and chairs. We eat everything in the sky except airplanes." [1] Cantonese cuisine includes almost all edible food in addition to the staples of pork, beef and chicken -- snakes, snails, insects, worms, chicken feet, duck tongues, ox genitals, and entrails. A subject of controversy amongst Westerners, dogs are raised as food in some places in China, though this is not a common food you find in restaurants, and is illegal in Hong Kong and will soon be in Taiwan.

Despite the countless Cantonese cooking methods, steaming, stir frying and deep frying are the most popular cooking methods in restaurants due to the short cooking time, and philosophy of bringing out the flavor of the freshest ingredients.

Spicy hot dishes are extremely rare in Cantonese cuisine. Spicy hot food is more common in very hot climates, such as those of Szechuan, Thailand, etc. where food spoils easily. Canton has the richest food resources in China in terms of agriculture and aquaculture. The copious amount of fresh food and mild weather allows Cantonese cuisine the bring out, rather than drown out, natural flavors.

Another unique Cantonese specialty is slow cooked soup. This is almost unheard of in any other Chinese cuisines. The soup is usually a clear broth prepared by simmering meat and other ingredients for several hours. Sometimes, Chinese herbal medicines are added to the pot. The ingredients of a rather expensive Cantonese slow cooked soup are: fresh whole chicken, dried air bladder of cod fish, dried sea cucumber and dried abalone. Another more affordable example includes pork bones, watercress with two types of almonds, etc. The combinations are varied and numerous.

The main attraction is the liquid in the pot, the solids are usually thrown away unless they are expensive ingredients like abalones or shark fins. A whole chicken may simmer in a broth for six hours or longer. The solids are usually unpalatable but the essences are all in the liquid. Traditional Cantonese families have this type of soup at least once a week. Though in this day and age, many families cannot afford this tradition due to the long preparation time required. For the same reason, not many restaurants serve this type of soup either. Even if they do, it can only be served as soupe du jour.