A poster for the 2021 Shandong Cuisine Innovative Competition.[Photo/CMG]

A competition of making innovative dishes within the ambit of the Shandong Cuisine or Lu Cuisine, one of the eight culinary traditions of Chinese cuisine, is taking place in Jinan, East China's Shandong province. It kicked off on September 16 and will last until February 2022, featuring four stages of open selection, semi-finals, finals and promotion.

Themed "New Era, New Shandong Cuisine," the competition has so far registered over 500 innovative dishes just across Shandong. "Top Ten Innovative Dishes in 2021" and "My Favorite New Shandong Dish in 2021" will be nominated and announced. Candidates can send videos showing them cooking their dishes to sdnews@cri.cn by November 31, 2021. The duration of each video should not exceed 5 minutes.

According to the competition committee, by the middle of October, a total of 3.06 million votes had been cast, attracting food lovers from across China as well as the United States, Brazil, Britain, Germany, Bulgaria, Cambodia, India, Iran, Japan, South Korea, Myanmar, Peru, Russia, Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam and others.

Collecting innovative dishes from Shandong as well as the world at large, the competition aims to develop new popular dishes, establish new brands and build a new platform of inheritance and innovative development. Candidates can present new dishes characterized by innovative concepts or traditional methods in Shandong Cuisine.