Beijing street food

Food is one of the best things about living in this city. My clothes are bearing the brunt of that - I'm sure I've put on a few kgs already! Since I spend so much time here thinking about, talking about and eating food, I thought I'd do a special blog post just to share some of the amazing things I've digested over the past 6 weeks.

I have no fridge, microwave or even sink in my workplace. So, given there's no possibility of bringing my own lunch to work, I've made it my mission to try as many local restaurants as I can, and sample as many dishes as possible. I started with a little corner which has a cluster of typical Beijing street food vendors. These stores are the kind that sell only one thing—like dumplings or pancake or some other tasty treat—but they have a few tables, stools and umbrellas out the front that look as if they have seen better days. You can get takeaway or, if one of the two or three tables is actually free, you can sit yourself down for a proper meal ... on a bright orange plastic plate. People look at me strangely when I sit down by myself, so I guess it's fairly uncommon to eat alone. Although, come to think of it, they could just be looking at me strangely because I'm white, a foot taller than most of them, and can't speak Chinese. 

My first experience was with the baozi stall, which is staffed by a lovely young man who puts up with my barely. Baozi (包子) are fat little steamed buns. They're often filled with pork or vegetables, but can be filled with anything really. I know this because I did a cooking class where we made baozi! Check out that post here.


Baozi are the best thing in the whole world and they look like this:

Then next stop was the jiaozi place. Jiaozi (饺子) are a bit like baozi, in that they are small and delicious. Jiaozi are a bit like baozi that have grown too big for their clothes. It's as if they lived in Beijing too long and have therefore become a fatty mcfat fat, so their exterior has kind of become thin and stretched. 

See? Just like an overweight baozi! (or maybe ... an overweight baozi that has subsequently lost a lot of weight and has developed flaps under its arms)


Next up is my rou bing (肉饼). I'd been eyeing off what looked to me like some kind of Chinese version of gozleme since I arrived. Not knowing the translation, or actually having any idea what it was, I politely asked the waitress if I could have a vegetarian one of those, and she started at me blankly. As it turns out, 肉饼 translates roughly to 'meat pancake'. Oh, riiiiight.

One of the other fascinating things about Beijing street food is that often the waitress will ask you whether you want a soup to 'drink' with your meal. The tasty looking orange soup you see in the picture is pumpkin congee. 


Ok this is where things get weird. You can see that I started out with the things that looked relatively familiar, or at least easily identifiable. But, as I was determined to get through every shop in the street corner, I had to try the last one—lürou huoshao (驴肉火烧). Now, you've got to understand that, when you don't understand a word of Chinese, and can't read characters, it's not a matter of being able to chat to someone and figure out whether or not you feel like that particular morsel. You've just got to point and hope for the best. What I pointed at was this:

Pretty tasty-looking, right? I'm thinking it's corned beef. It looks like corned beef, tastes like corned beef. A bit strange that in China they have beef that's so similar to how Mum cooks it at home. And it's pretty tasty!


Off I trot back to work, where I've become accustomed to looking up the things I've eaten after every lunchtime. I start by googling 'Beijing meat sandwich'. Nothing looks similar to what I've just eaten. How about 'meat in pastry China'? Nope, that doesn't work either. Several more combinations of random words—Beijing street food, China corned beef, China beef brisket. Nothing. Oh, how about 'Beijing meat burger'? This is what I click on:

Ohhh ... donkey. Oopsie.