Hakka food is usually thought of as low-end fare. However, the refined dishes served up at Bin Yuan Hakka Restaurant will surely change your ideas about that.

It is not only because of its comfortable dining environment. The restaurant in Hongling Road Central, with elevators leading to the carpeted hall and specious dining rooms on the third floor, is clean, modest and relaxing.

It looks elegant, compared with the hundreds of crowded low-cost Hakka eateries found at street corners, though not as extravagant or luxurious as some of the city's top Cantonese restaurants.

Interestingly, Bin Yuan, which serves up one of its best-selling dishes dubbed "China's No. 1 drumstick", is located just a few hundred meters from a high-end restaurant renowned for its dish known as "China's No.1 chicken."

The steamed drumstick is definitely worth a try. The skin is golden thanks to the use of a traditional hakka spice, shajiang, a type of ginger. It is not spicy, but has a pleasant and refreshing aroma.

The drumstick, though big, is not greasy. Instead, it is juicy, tender and tasty. At 28 yuan it might seem a little expensive, but the chickens are bought from a free-range farm in Heyuan, a Hakka city about 180 kilometers northeast of Shenzhen, where the chickens are fed on organic food.

Hakka people are an immigrant tribe of ethnic Han people in Guangdong Province, who originated from Central China. Because they migrated relatively late to southern China, the Hakkas had to settle in sparsely populated hilly countryside where chicken, pork, tofu and vegetables were possible to farm.

In fact, Hakka cuisine combines Central and southern Chinese cuisine, which make Hakka dishes one of the three types of Cantonese cuisine. The other two are Guangzhou and Chaozhou.

Stuffed tofu is a typical Hakka dish and is popular at family reunions. It is said the stuffed tofu is a variation of jiaozi, Chinese dumplings, as the Hakka ancestors were jiaozi fans who found tofu a good wheat substitute.

Bin Yuan Hakkas Restaurant makes tofu by using high quality soy beans and freshly minced pork for the filling. Salt, ginger and chives are simply used to bring out the natural fragrance of the tofu and meat.

Fresh produce from uncontaminated farmland are key to the final product. Vegetables at Bin Yuan are organic, and are planted on farmland away from any industrial pollution, said the restaurant's manager Zhu Yufang. The stir-fried rape flower stalk is tasty and unforgettable for its natural sweetness and tantalizing smell.

Its freshwater fish are caught in Evergreen Lake in Heyuan, which is a vast 370-square kilometer reservoir.

The fish are either steamed or fried and cooked in a pot. Both are tasty, with the former light and sweet and the latter salty but fragrant.

Last but not least, the restaurant's pork soup is not to be missed. The broth made of of meat, liver and lung is finely stewed for hours and is very tasty and nutritional. It reminds many Chinese people of warm, homely kitchens where delicious homemade soup is made by loving mothers.

The average price of Bin Yuan's popular dishes range from 20 yuan (US$2.4) to 30 yuan, though it does offer rare delicacies such as shark's fins, bird's nests and abalone for wealthier diners.

Editor: Donald