Meituan-Dianping releases food handbook

Two years after Michelin debuted its famed restaurant guide on the Chinese mainland, online-to-offline service platform Meituan-Dianping has picked 28 restaurants as "must try once in a lifetime" for its own guide launched on Tuesday in Shanghai.

Dubbed the "Black Pearl", which, like the guide, is painstaking to produce, the list recommends 330 restaurants from 27 cities known as culinary destinations. Five of the cities are overseas including New York, Paris and Tokyo.

Apart from the 28 restaurants awarded three diamonds, 85 are given two diamonds, which means "must try on an occasion", and 217 one diamond, meaning "must try for a casual gathering". The restaurants charge 677 yuan ($105) per capita on average.