China Real Food Adventure

Peking duck on the first night

The tour opens in Beijing with dinner at a traditional kaoyadian — a roast duck restaurant — and the bird carved at the table bears only passing resemblance to the Peking duck served abroad. It is glossy, smoky, and it sets the tone for what follows: ten days eating through four very different Chinese regional cuisines, with the country's headline sights threaded through the meals rather than the other way round.

Intrepid runs this as a small-group trip with a local leader, and the food sits firmly in the foreground. You still visit Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall and the Terracotta Warriors — but each day is built around where you're eating and who you're eating with.

Four regions, four very different kitchens

The route moves from Beijing to Xi'an, on to Chengdu in Sichuan, and finishes in Hong Kong. Each stop has its own culinary character, and the itinerary leans into the contrasts rather than smoothing them over. Beijing is imperial and northern — Peking duck, hotpot, and the halal snack stalls along Niujie Street in the Muslim community, where you'll try niurou bing (meat pie) and sticky rice cakes before ducking into Fayuan Temple, one of the city's oldest Buddhist sites. There's also a stop at a traditional hutong in the area.

Xi'an is where the Silk Road shaped the kitchen. The Muslim Quarter is the obvious highlight — roujiamo (Chinese hamburger), hand-pulled noodles, and hammered candy being worked by vendors near historic mosques. You also spend an afternoon in a local couple's home learning to make noodles from scratch, which is the kind of thing that sounds twee in theory and works in practice.

Chengdu is fiery and numbing — Sichuan peppercorns, chilli oil, mapo tofu, kung pao chicken. You cook several of these yourself at the Sichuan Cuisine Museum, after a morning at a panda breeding centre. Hong Kong closes the trip on a Cantonese note: dim sum, steamed and fried, in a city where the restaurant culture is denser and more competitive than anywhere else on the route.

Bookings and what's included

The trip runs ten days door to door, starting with a welcome meeting at 6pm on day one in Beijing and ending in Hong Kong. Accommodation is in hotels throughout. Breakfasts come as standard, and a number of the signature meals are included — the Peking duck opener, the Niujie Street snack sampling, the Sichuan cooking class — with the rest left open so you can follow your leader's recommendations or go your own way. Optional extras sit alongside, priced in yuan; a Beijing-style hotpot dinner (around CNY 200–300) is the notable one.

It suits travellers who want China's signature sights without planning the eating themselves, and who'd rather move in a small group with a local guide than assemble a private itinerary. Anyone squeamish about offal, chilli, or unfamiliar street food will find some days harder going than others — this is a trip that takes the food seriously and expects you to engage with it.