10 Best Places to Eat in Guilin, China
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Eating your way through Guilin means two different meals: the rice-noodle culture of Guilin city itself, and Yangshuo’s beer fish and river snails once you’re out among the karst peaks. Youyi Xuan is the anchor for the first, founded in 1896 and still the best-known name for horse-meat rice noodles. From there, this list spreads to the Three Treasures gift shelf, Gongcheng’s UNESCO-listed oil tea, and the night markets both cities run after dark. Book a Guilin food tour if you’d rather have someone walk you through the ordering.
10 places to eat, at a glance
| Pick | Dish | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Youyi Xuan | Horse-meat Guilin mifen (est. 1896) | Guilin city |
| Chongshan Rice Noodles | Guilin mifen, ~¥14/person | Guilin city |
| Laodongjiang Rice Noodles | Guilin mifen, 30+ years | Shijiayuan Road, Guilin |
| Xie Sanjie Beer Fish | Yangshuo beer fish (pijiu yu) | West Street/Pantao Road, Yangshuo |
| Xie Dajie Beer Fish | Yangshuo beer fish | ~6 locations, Yangshuo |
| West Street stalls | Stuffed river snails (niang tian luo) | Yangshuo |
| A Sanbao gift shop | Sanhua liquor, chili sauce, fermented tofu | Near Zhengyang Pedestrian Street |
| Xin Guoji Oil Tea | Yao oil tea (youcha) | Guilin city |
| Jinbuhuan Sour Shop | Sour preserved fruit | Guilin city |
| Shijiayuan / Yuexing Tribe | Night market street food | Guilin city |
Guilin mifen, the dish you’ll eat more than once a day
Youyi Xuan, founded in 1896, is the best-known name for horse-meat rice noodles, Guilin’s signature variant, and it’s worth the visit for the history alone. The dish itself, thin rice noodles in a spiced meat gravy called lushui (star anise, cinnamon, monk fruit, pork or beef), carries national intangible-cultural-heritage status, and local legend traces it to Qin-dynasty army cooks, unverifiable but the story every stall owner tells. Chongshan Rice Noodles (around ¥14/person) and Laodongjiang Rice Noodles on Shijiayuan Road (30-plus years running) are the two other names worth seeking out, ordered dry-mixed with peanuts and pickled bamboo shoots, or in broth. Bowls run ¥3-10 and plenty of shops are open 24 hours, this is legitimate breakfast food here, not just a late-night snack.
Yangshuo Beer Fish, confirm the price before it’s cooked
Xie Sanjie Beer Fish (West Street/Pantao Road) and Xie Dajie Beer Fish (around six locations across Yangshuo) are the two names that come up constantly for pijiu yu, a whole live Li River fish fried scales-on, then braised with local Liquan beer, ginger, garlic, chili and tomatoes. It runs ¥80-230, priced per catty (jin, about 500g), and confirming that per-catty price before the fish goes into the pan isn’t optional, it’s the single most common way visitors get overcharged in Yangshuo. Pair it with West Street’s stuffed river snails (¥20-40), river snail meat minced with pork, mint, ginger and Sanhua jiu, packed back into the shell and braised, suck the broth first, then pick out the meat. Browse Yangshuo food tours if you want someone else handling the ordering and the haggling both.
The Three Treasures, Guilin’s souvenir shelf
Sold as gift boxes near Zhengyang Pedestrian Street, the Three Treasures (Sanbao) are Guilin’s answer to a food souvenir that isn’t a fridge magnet. Sanhua Liquor is a rice baijiu aged in cool rock caves, named for the three layers of foam it throws when shaken, Richard Nixon reportedly called it “Guilin Moutai” on his 1972 visit, a good story worth repeating even if it’s not independently verified. Guilin Chili Sauce (chilies, garlic and fermented soybeans, cured 10 days to two weeks) and Fermented Bean Curd (doufuru, roughly 200 years old, tofu cultured with Mucor mold in Sichuan pepper, star anise, garlic and Sanhua jiu) round out the set.
Oil tea, Gongcheng’s UNESCO-listed tradition
Xin Guoji Oil Tea is the easiest way to try youcha in Guilin city itself without the trip to Gongcheng County, the tradition’s actual heritage center. The tea is stir-fried in oil with ginger and garlic, often with peanuts, rice or corn, then pounded, boiled and strained, served with puffed rice, soybeans and dough twists, and it’s genuinely bitter and savory, not a coffee substitute dressed up for tourists. Be honest with yourself about that going in. Gongcheng’s “Yao Oil Tea Customs” reached UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2022, a real credential, not marketing copy, and runs about ¥25-30/person with refills.
Osmanthus everything, and the night markets
Guilin literally means “forest of sweet osmanthus,” and the flower shows up everywhere in autumn, roughly September-November, as jelly, candy, syrup-topped rice dumplings, tea and wine. For a cheaper wander, water chestnut cake (¥3/piece, Laodongjiang and Ziyou Road) and sour preserved fruit (¥15, Jinbuhuan Sour Shop) make an easy afternoon of grazing. After dark, Shijiayuan (busiest past 11pm, locally billed the “champion of Guilin night snacks”) and Yuexing Tribe (opened 2023, 140-plus stalls, trending with locals as much as tourists) are the two real night markets in Guilin city, treat Yangshuo’s West Street Night Market as a sit-down tourist-street price instead.
What’s the smartest way to eat cheaply in Guilin?
Stick to mifen. A bowl runs ¥3-10, stuffed snails ¥20-40, and water chestnut cake or sour fruit another ¥3-15, a full day of eating for well under ¥50 if you skip sit-down beer fish and stick to noodle stalls and night markets.
Do you need to book restaurants in advance?
No, almost none of these take reservations, mifen stalls and night market stands are walk-up by nature, and even the named beer fish restaurants in Yangshuo mostly run on a queue-and-wait basis. If you’re splitting a trip between mifen in Guilin and beer fish in Yangshuo, check Trip.com for train times between the two rather than trying to eat both in one rushed day.
One concrete tip: tipping isn’t customary anywhere in China, restaurants, street stalls, or otherwise. Round up if you want, but nobody’s expecting it, and leaving cash on the table can just as easily confuse a server as please one.
Planning the rest of the trip? See our full Guilin guide and things to do in Guilin for how to build a day around these meals.