From dumplings to noodles and chicken feet, everything on the table is black. This is the Black Banquet, which originated in the period of the Republic of China (1911-1949).
In the 1920s, Shuang Feng Yuan, a restaurant in Nanjing, gained its fame for offering black food, and its black banquet even got very popular with the Kuomintang officials. However, the restaurant closed during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45), and the black banquet disappeared.
Today, the recipes for the black banquet have been gradually rediscovered. The foods are dyed black using the juice of sea bilberry (Vaccinium bracteatum), which is fragrant and nutritive.
