A TOTAL of 17 restaurants in Shenzhen have made it onto a list of a famed restaurant guide known as China’s answer to the influential Michelin Guide.

According to the “2024 Black Pearl Restaurant Guide,” which was unveiled Jan. 25 in eastern China’s Wuxi, Shenzhen added four restaurants in 2023 to bring its total number on the list to 17, making the southern China city the one with the highest increase in the number of listed restaurants on the Chinese mainland.

Built on the popular restaurant review and rating platform of Chinese e-commerce services firm Meituan, the Black Pearl Restaurant Guide was launched in 2018, two years after Michelin debuted its famed restaurant guide on the Chinese mainland in Shanghai.

The Black Pearl guide came at a time when the restaurant industry had raised concerns about the credibility of the Michelin Guide’s evaluation of Chinese cuisines. It billed itself as a guide to represent the taste of Chinese consumers from the Chinese perspective.

“The Black Pearl is not only a restaurant guide, but responsible for exploring and promoting the Chinese culinary culture, and propelling the development of China’s dining industry,” it once stated.

The Black Pearl guide is published annually and all restaurants are evaluated from culinary skills, consumer experience, and inheritance and innovation.

The latest Black Pearl guide lists a total of 341 restaurants from 30 cities worldwide. The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA), comprising nine cities in Guangdong in addition to Hong Kong and Macao, had a total of 90 restaurants on the list, increasing by 16 from a year earlier and representing a growth rate of more than 20%.

Hong Kong and Macao saw a rapid growth in the number of listed restaurants, up 26% compared with a year ago. In 2023, the number of mainland users browsing information on Black Pearl restaurants in Hong Kong and Macao through Meituan’s platform soared 187% year on year.

The 90 listed restaurants in the GBA are located in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shantou, Hong Kong, Macao and Shunde. Hong Kong has the most listed restaurants, with 31, Guangzhou follows with 19, and Macau and Shenzhen jointly rank third, each with 17 listed restaurants.

As for the diamond rating, there are three three-diamond restaurants (“must visit once in a lifetime”), 19 two-diamond restaurants (“perfect for special occasions”) and 68 one-diamond restaurants (“great for family/friends gatherings”).

Among the 90 Black Pearl restaurants, 60 serve Chinese cuisine, accounting for more than 60%. Among them, 44 serve various styles of Cantonese cuisine, including Guangzhou, Teochew, Hakka and Shunde cuisines, which continue to dominate the plates of local people when they dine out.

Among Shenzhen’s 17 listed restaurants, there is one two-diamond restaurant and 16 one-diamond restaurants. In terms of cuisine, 10 serve Chinese cuisine, accounting for nearly 60%.

Three restaurants in the guide come in at an average spending of at least 2,000 yuan (US$278.60) per head, while seven have an average price below 1,000 per person, with the highest average price at 2,487 yuan per person and the lowest at 453 yuan.

According to official data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, the total revenue from China’s catering sector reached 5.29 trillion yuan in 2023, an increase of 20.4% year on year. It’s the first time that the annual catering revenue in the country surpassed the threshold of 5 trillion yuan.

As China’s consumer market has rapidly recovered from the COVID pandemic, demand for catering consumption gradually shifted towards fine dining, nutritious and healthy eating, allowing more affordable refined restaurants to stand out. (Yang Yunfei)