I am so agree with you! Back to thousand years ago, in Song dynasty, the greatest poet Su Dong Po, has already praised hangzhou food in his poem: " No other place in the world has better banquet like in Hangzhou." Hangzhou is known to be the Paradise on Earth among almost all Chinese people, not just because it's beautiful silk and west lake, also because rich soil land and soft water system that grow delicious food. there is no any other place in China like Zhejiang Province, expecially Hangzhou, has always been prosperity, rich, plenty of delicious food, even when the whole country was suffering from poverty and went through difficult time. It has another name of the "Hometown of Fish and Rice", In Chinese “鱼米之乡", Read as "Yu Mi Zhi Xiang". I need to mention Dong Po Meat got the name after Su Dong Po. When Hangzhou was the capital city of anxient China for several dynasties, Canton, which now is famous for its cantoness food, was just a very remote place, where the center govenment of anixient China Empire exile prisoners , crimials, or peole who would not being accepted by the society there for life time sentence, in chinese “流放”, read as " liu fang". That's why even today, most Cantoness people insist to only speak Cantoness language while most people of all other provinces can speak Chinese Mandarin. I saw a post about Cantoness food here, it introduced how cantoness food got into United States. A good article, only one thing I could not agree with is that, "even Chinese people think Cantoness food is best ". I guess lots of Chinese people from Northern China or East Coast China will not agree with that. And because it is very difficult to get visa to US, so lots of real good chef in China would not be able to come US cook the authentic Chinese food other than Cantoness food. I am openning a small restaurant in Philadelphia, PA offering Hangzhou and Yangzi River South area food, unfortunetly, we have to start from small, currently only offering noodles and dumplings. Because it is very difficult to get the exactly the same materials we use in China, we have do lots of experiment to make sure we handle the american materials right. For example, when broil duck, our original receip is need to cook one and half hour, but here we cook the duck for about 45 mininutes and the duck meat already start to melt. Also we need to figure out what herb to use to take away the unpleasent smell of the chicken. Traditional chinese herb would not enough to take away that smell. It was a surprise to find out that there was certain herb that US people use does a better job to process those Chicken. Of course only delicate nose and tongue can tell the difference. Hangzhou food use less salt, less grease, less sugar, more natural material and vegetable, which is consistent with health requirment of mordern life. Hangzhou has always been a prosperity place, not starving people hunger for heavy oil type of food, so the food is just like the silk, which hangzhou is famous for, fresh, light, graceful, and natural.