Yunnan cooking is not one cuisine but many, since the province's geography runs from tropical river valleys to high Tibetan plateau and its population includes two dozen minority groups with distinct kitchens. Kunming, as the capital and the place where everybody comes to trade and study, has restaurants representing most of them, and a visitor can work through a large part of the province's food in a few days without leaving the city.
What the regional kitchens taste like
Dai cooking from Xishuangbanna, in the far south, is sour, herby and lightly grilled: fish and chicken cooked over charcoal, banana-leaf parcels, lemongrass, coriander, lime, pineapple rice and a great deal of fresh chilli and garlic. Bai cooking from the Dali area is gentler and uses lake fish, cured ham, dairy in the form of fried cheese, and cold vegetable dishes. Naxi cooking from Lijiang relies on bacon and preserved pork, fried potatoes, and freshwater fish. The Tibetan kitchens of the north-west serve yak meat, barley, butter tea and dried cheese. Across all of them run the ingredients that define Yunnan as a whole: wild mushrooms in season, ham from Xuanwei, rice noodles, and an extraordinary range of wild vegetables and herbs.
The cross-province classics
Whatever region a restaurant claims, some dishes are everywhere. Crossing-the-bridge rice noodles - a bowl of hot broth to which you add meat, vegetables and noodles yourself - is the Kunming dish, eaten at breakfast and at all hours. Steam-pot chicken in a ceramic pot, fried goat cheese, grilled river fish, rice noodles with minced pork and fermented soybean, and the seasonal wild mushroom dishes that run from June to September, when the markets fill with porcini, chanterelles and the highly prized and potentially dangerous varieties that must be cooked precisely.
Practical notes
Wild mushrooms are excellent and worth eating, but eat them in restaurants rather than cooking them yourself unless you know exactly what you have bought - several species are toxic if undercooked, and misidentification is common. Minority restaurants tend to be in clusters, with whole streets given over to one regional cuisine, so it is worth asking locally rather than choosing at random. Vegetarians can eat very well on the vegetable, tofu and mushroom side of Yunnan cooking, though they should ask about ham and dried shrimp, both of which are used as seasoning in dishes that look vegetarian.
