Food Adventures

The Mid Autumun Festival break has now ended so that means back to school/ work for all of China.  I enjoyed the break so much, I was not looking forward to going back to class on Monday.  But anyways, things have somewhat slowed down here in Beijing as I don’t have any plans to go anywhere sightseeing like I usually do.  But in lieu of that, I have been eating a lot of reallllly good food.  Which is what this post will be about.  FOOD. It’s everyone’s favorite topic, right? It sure is mine =D  I will shamelessly admit that sometimes when people post pictures of their trips, I will skip all the pictures of the sights they’ve seen and jump straight to the ones with food.  Then maybe after seeing those I’ll go back and look at the others.  Yes, I do that.  Don’t judge.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, as of yet, I’ve found the food in Beijing to be somewhat below my expectations.  I really want to visit Hong Kong and try their food as I’ve heard it’s amazing, and I want to visit Sichuan for some spicy food!  From what I’ve noticed, noodles and bao zi are pretty popular here.  There’s also this one type of street food that I’ve seen around that I really want to try.  It’s called jian bing.  When they make it, the cook spreads a pancake like batter on a circular flat iron and cracks an egg onto it.  They then flip it over so the egg is cooking on the other side and slather on a bunch of different sauces and pastes, and depending on who is making it, they put lettuce, cilantro, onions, etc. on it as well along with a thin fried piece of dough.  It always looks sooo good but I’ve usually seen it after I’ve eaten so I still have yet to try one.  I will report back when I do!  You can see a video of what I'm talking about below.

Anyways, back to Beijing.  I’ve been asking around to see what kind of food Beijing is known for here and the answer I usually get is Beijing Duck (which is apparently the same as Peking Duck).  So this past weekend, a couple friends and I went to go try it.  Usually eating Beijing Duck is pretty expensive as I’ve heard of people paying over 250 RMB for a meal (~$45) which is expensive comparing it to the fact that you can get a full meal for 6 RMB (~$1) in China.  However, our meal only ending up costing us 36 RMB (~$6)!  And it was pretty tasty for the price.  We ordered a Duck set, an eggplant dish, and a pork dish.  

Eggplant with green peppers

Pork dish

Duck side dishes

The star of the meal... Duck!

While we were there, they had a party room right next to our table where a huge group of guys were having some beer filled party or something.  Everyone in that room must have been very drunk as we heard shouts coming out of the room all the time and every couple minutes the doors would open and a red faced, barely can walk guy would come out and stumble around.  It was a somewhat amusing, slightly sad sight to see.  I don’t think one sober guy walked out of the room that night.  Oh, and it was only like 7:30pm.  The Asian guys get the party started early!  Some of the guys looked realllllly young too.  There doesn’t really seem to be a drinking age here in China as I’ve never seen anyone denied alcohol, even if they look pretty young.  I’ve also never been carded in bars or clubs which I know for sure I would back in MN.  Oh, the good and bad of China =P

Onto my next delicious meal!  I had been hearing people talk about a coffee place with good waffles and French toast called Maan Coffee.  So my friend Sara and I went to go try it out.  They had plastic displays of the food they offered in their display cases and it all looked really yummy!  I wasn’t in the mood for something too sweet this time, but the next time I go I’m going to have to try a chocolate waffle with ice cream. MMMM, CHOCOLATE.  However, this time I settled with the Strawberry toast which was essentially a big block of bread (yum!) with some strawberry swirl in it topped with strawberries and sweetened condensed milk.  I was a very happy, sugar high girl when I finished.  The decorations in the coffee shop were really cute too and when you ordered they gave you a teddy bear to help the waiters identify you when your food was ready.

Display case.  Doesn't it look good?!

Mmmmmm

Onto my last food adventure this week.  Being here in China, it wouldn’t be right if I didn’t try something a little of the ordinary.  One of my friends mentioned how he had recently tried Donkey meat.  When I first heard it, I was instantly against the idea of trying and didn’t think too much of it after.  But I mentioned it to another friend of mine later, who is really open to trying new things, and she really wanted to try it.  She convinced me to go with her, and I’m happy she did.  The restaurant we went to was a small shop that specialized in only Donkey meat as almost item on the menu included it.  We ended up ordering a Donkey sandwich for each of us (which was only 4 RMB! (~$0.70), and a big Donkey meat soup that had napa and clear noodles in it.  I first tried the sandwich.  I took a deep breath… and took a big bite.  It tasted like… meat haha.  And really tasty meat at that!  I can’t really describe it but either the meat itself or the seasoning they use on it made it taste really good.  The soup was delicious as well.  Lesson learned from this meal is that I need to be more open to trying new things.  Maybe the next time I talk to you guys, I’ll have tried dog! (Just kidding!! Dog lovers please don’t kill me)

The name of the restaurant was literally "Donkey Meat Restaurant"

Donkey noodle soup

yummy Donkey sandwiches

Here in a China, you see a lot of weird things.  Many times, I just accept it or turn my head and keep walking.  But there’s something I’ve been seeing around China that I can’t help but laugh every time I see.  They are these weird hat things that people wear.  They’re made out of paper and originally take on the shape of larger toilet paper tube.  However, the ends expand so that they can fit over your head.  This invention makes absolutely no sense to me.  It doesn’t block the sun or rain as there are holes in the paper once it expands and it would not be a good fashion statement as they are a bright, multi-colored contraption.  I couldn’t help but take a creeper shot so you guys could see what I am talking about.  What do you guys think?