This cuisine includes dishes from Huai'an, Yangzhou, Suzhou, and Shanghai. If Shandong cuisine is characterized by stirring and frying over a hot fire, Huai-Yang cuisine is characterized by stewing, braising, and steaming over a low fire for a long time. Famous dishes cooked this way are chicken braised with chestnuts, pork steamed in lotus leaf, duck stewed with eight treasures, pork meatballs Yangzhou style, and butterfly sea cucumber (sea cucumber cut into butterfly shapes and cooked with flavorings).

The vegetarian banquet is a special feature of the Huai-Yang cuisine, and the vegetarian dishes in Beijing cuisine are mostly variants of Huai-Yang cuisine. This is not true for the vegetarian food of the other cuisines. The Huai-Yang snacks and refreshments are exquisite, such as boiled, shredded, dried bean curd; steamed dumplings with minced meat and gravy; steamed meat dumplings with the dough gathered at the top.

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