Hand Made Noodles

Hand Made Noodles, originally uploaded by yellojkt.

The restaurant at the Terra Cotta Soldiers complex was buffet style, but they had an area with chefs making fresh noodle soup from scratch. And that included the noodles. They would take patches of dough and stretch and toss it like a pizza maker, except they were stringing it out thinner and longer. Eventually they hand sliced it into tiny slivers and boiled into noodles for the soup.

Snake Wine

Snake Wine, originally uploaded by yellojkt.

The terra cotta warrior complex has a buffet restaurant for the visitors. One of their ways of getting a few more sales is that they come around with a beverage cart. They include the choice of snake wine. The wine is really 80 proof rice alcohol with a snake in the bottle. It supposedly has medicinal and virility enhancing properties, but nobody in our group was willing to try it.

Meat Wagon

IMG_4295, originally uploaded by yellojkt.

Trucks are not allowed in Beijing, so a lot of deliveries are by van. This van is a traveling meat wagon with a load of beef in the back for delivery to the restaurants. There wasn't anything special about the van (particualarly not any refrigeration) except the cardboard in the back to collect the juice dripping.

Meat Cycle

IMG_4294, originally uploaded by yellojkt.

A lot of deliveries to restaurants are by bicycle or motor cycle. This motorcycle has a load of fresh meat in the back for the morning delivery.

Honey Puff

IMG_0185, originally uploaded by yellojkt.

Right next to the meat on the stick grille was this franchised snack store. A honey puff is a small ball of dough like a donut hole but a lot lighter. They had several different flavors and the ones we had were sweet and honey flavored.

Meat On The Street

IMG_0187, originally uploaded by yellojkt.

I was determined to eat food from a street vendor even if I couldn't talk my wife or fellow travelers to. Right next to the McDonalds were several store front vendors of different dishes. The one that kept catching my eye was the kabob or satay vendor that always seemed to have a crowd.

His booth was dingy and grease stained but the meat always smelled good and there was usually a line. There was no seating indoors or outdoors, so people would just get their skewers and stand on the sidewalk and eat them right off a plastic plate. The finished bamboo skewers would be thrown into a nearby trashcan or just dropped on the sidewalk for the street cleaners to sweep up the next day.

Meat On A Stick

IMG_0186, originally uploaded by yellojkt.

The meat on a stick vendor had two different bins. Stuff from the first bin sat in a little tub of hot water and I couldn't tell if the skewer was meat or not. Some of them may have been mushrooms or vegetables. Those skewers cost 1yuan (15 cents) each. I had three of them and none were particularly tasty.

The bigger grille had losts of skewers of meat satay or kabob style. To reheat the meat, the cook held it down in the grille in front of some sort of electric heater for a while. These sticks cost 3 yuan (about 40 cents) and were very tasty. The meat was very firm but not stringy and covered in a reddish spicy rub.

Fried Dough

IMG_3874, originally uploaded by yellojkt.

Back in the alley neighborhoods called hutongs, there are a wide variety of food vendors. This store sells fried dough. It tastes a lot like the funnel cakes you would find at a fair, but without any powdered sugar all over.

Best of all, it was super-cheap. Each piece only costs 50 yuan (about 6 cents). It was a very filling if slightly bland morning snack.

Bad Eggs

IMG_3892, originally uploaded by yellojkt.

Food safety in China has been in the news a lot lately. Many people still get meals from small restaurants and stalls in their local neighborhood. Air conditioning and refrigeration are not common.

This stack of eggs was just outside such a vendor. I don't know how much volume they do, but that is a lot of eggs to be just sitting in an alley. The plate next to the eggs was a dog dish for the owner's pet.

Home Grown Fast Food

IMG_3729, originally uploaded by yellojkt.

The concept of franchises is evolving quickly in China. This very new building looks to be one store in a chain specializing in soup. If it weren't for the entirely Chinese signage, it wouldn't be out of place in a US outparcel.

Breakfast Menu

IMG_3804, originally uploaded by yellojkt.

This is the window menu of a Chinese fast food chain. All the items are for breakfast and each costs about a dollar. The choices include at least two soups, which is a meal anytime in China.

Mickey Dees

IMG_0188, originally uploaded by yellojkt.

McDonalds runs a distant second in the imperial franchise wars. The stores are as brightly lit and squeaky clean as their US counterparts. The posters in the window are for a fruit float drink.dessert that isn't available in the US. They have ice cream and one of four flavors, coffee, strawberry, pineapple, and watermelon.

Special Sauce

P1000860, originally uploaded by yellojkt.

The China version of a Quarter Pounder (and I have no idea what they call it since they are metric) is very similar to the American version with two differences. The special sauce is not mayo-based and is much spicier. Also, instead of pickles, they use sliced raw cucumber.

Kentucky Fried China

IMG_3837, originally uploaded by yellojkt.

KFC is the number one US fast food chain in China. This very large store is in downtown Beijing very close to the Forbidden City.

While we tried to avoid chain food, we were at the main train station and I needed a snack. The food choices were KFC and some large dirty looking soup counters. The soup place menus were in Chinese and I had no idea how to order, so I went to KFC. They had a picture menu and the manager spoke enough English to take my order. I ordered a Twister, but I don't know whether I got the Dragon flavor or the Mexican version since they were on the same box on the menu. Whatever it was, it was spicier than the American equivalent. I also got a ice cream with some sort of fruit topping that I have never seen in a US store.

While I usually go out of my way to avoid KFC in the US, I at least reassured myself that the Chinese version is no worse than American version.

Hot Pots

P1010175, originally uploaded by yellojkt.

A popular style of Chinese cooking that is not popular in America is called "hot pot". It's a little like fondue, but it uses broth instead of oil for the cooking. It can be done with large communal pots or small individual ones like in this picture.

Vegetables and thinly slice meats are put in the boiling broth and then removed when they are cooked. You mix your own sauce from a tray of condiments like soy sauce, ginger, garlic, peppers, etc. It's a fun way to make a meal.

Sweet Tooth

P1000887, originally uploaded by yellojkt.

Dessert is not a traditional part of a Chinese meal. At best some fruit are served, but the standard last course is soup. A large bowl of soup is served and everybody takes a bowlful.

As a special ocassion, the group had a birthday cake ordered from a bakery. The cake was excellent and equal in quality to a fancy wedding cake. There was also a small pastry shop right near our hotel. so there is hope for the Chinese to develop a sweet tooth.

Dressing The Part

P1000889, originally uploaded by yellojkt.

A lot of restaruants in China specialize in dishes from a particular region. Since we were off to Xian, our last big meal (which includes most of the previous pictures) specialized in food from western China. The wait staff was all dressed in native costumes from that restaurant. Here the waitress is wearing the faintly fez-like hat common to that area.

Chinese Fajitas

P1000875, originally uploaded by yellojkt.

One problem in trying to describe the food we ate in China is that we rarely knew what the dishes were called. Often we were just told the major ingredients. Pork, chicken, beef, and lamb were all common.

Some foods like the one in this picture required some assembly. A thin piece of dough like a tortilla was to be filled with strips of meat and vegetables like carrots, onions, and green and red peppers. I immediatey dubbed them Chinese fajitas.

Other foods like Peking duck and whole baked fish were served on a platter and diners just tore off the parts they wanted with chopsticks.

Lazy Susan

P1000877, originally uploaded by yellojkt.

Large parties at the restaurants in China are served at tables of ten with a large glass turntable lazy susan. New dishes are brought out every five minutes or so. For the American taste, bottles of soft drinks are brought out. 1.5 liter is the standard bottle size.

Chinese Food

P1000876, originally uploaded by yellojkt.

The most common question I get about my visit to China is "How was the food?" "Delicious" is the easy answer. We ate most of our meals in large groups at restaurants and always had way too much to eat. Dish after dish would come out and we could never eat it all.

Saying you ate "Chinese" food is a lot like saying you ate "European" food. There is a wide variety of styles and cusines. Most of the food we ate was centered around cooking styles of northern and western China.