Up ahead: food feasts

Quanjude Group has launched set menus for Spring Festival celebration, featuring its time-honored and award-winning delicacies.[Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily]

Restaurants in China, including the Quanjude Group, have already begun preparing for the celebration to ring in the upcoming Lunar New Year

The upcoming Spring Festival falls in January 2017. And as more Chinese nowadays prefer to dine out to celebrate the festival, restaurants in China have already begun preparing for the celebration.

The Quanjude Group, which owns the popular brands Quanjude, Fengzeyuan, Sichuan Restaurant, and Fangshan Restaurant, has just released its 2017 Spring Festival dinner menus, featuring its signature and award-winning delicacies.

Its renowned Peking roast duck franchise Quanjude was established more than 150 years ago, and the group now operates restaurants both at home and abroad.

The highlights of its menus are dishes that have won at the World Championship of Chinese Cuisine, which is held once every four years. It is one of the most celebrated Chinese cuisine competitions in the world.

The event this year was held from Sep 19 to 21 in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, and attracted more than 200 chefs from around 20 countries and regions.

The competition was fierce. Quanjude's contestants were chefs from the Wangfujing branch of the Quanjude Peking roast duck franchise, and they carried some of their ingredients, seasonings, and tableware, from Beijing.

Yet, they still had to overcome obstacles such as lack of proper cooking devices and ingredients to present the Group's culinary traditions and innovation through eight dishes.