Liangxi Crispy Eel 梁溪脆鳝
Liangxi Crispy Eel is featured among the local specialties of Jiangsu.
Liangxi Crispy Eel (梁溪脆鳝), also called Wuxi crispy eel, is a sweet-salty dish from Wuxi (无锡). The cooked eel is crisp and arranged into a pagoda-shaped mound, giving the dish a distinctive appearance as well as texture.
Boiling, stripping and frying
In a 2024 Modern Express report, Wuxi Taihu Hotel (无锡太湖饭店) executive chef Yang Zhijie (杨智杰) explains the sequence. The eel is first boiled with salt, then stripped. This stage depends on judging the cooking carefully: eel that is too soft or too undercooked is difficult to strip. Frying follows, with the heating and cooling intervals carefully controlled. The eel is then dressed with sauce and built into its tower.
A boat-cuisine account
Yang traces the dish to cooking aboard boats on Lake Taihu (太湖). He relates that a restaurant at the foot of Huishan (惠山) later adapted it, with the owner taking inspiration from Longguang Pagoda (龙光塔) for the piled presentation.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-27. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.
Image credits & notes (1)
- A common version of Liangxi Crispy Eel · 梁溪脆鳝常见做法参考照片。Photo: 賈夢龍 · CC BY-SA 4.0Resized for the web; the photo itself has not been edited.
