Video guide to Beijing's best street foods
Malatang, egg pancake, donkey meat: A Chinese chef leads a delicious tour of her favorite food stalls in China's capital
By Nicole Pang, Tracy YouA chef's chopstick challenge in Beijing's hutong alleyways. (Video by Nicole Pang/CNNGo)
Everybody comes to Beijing to eat that sizzling roast duck.
Then what?
Beyond the famous duck, there are endless eats to discover along the city's busy streets and inside its lively hutong alleyways.
Beijing-based chef Sue Zhou recently roamed the city to pick her favorite Beijing street foods for CNNGo.
Here's her list: spicy, mouth-numbing vegetable soup ("malatang" in Chinese), crispy five-grain pancakes ("jian bing") and donkey-meat burgers with scallion.
"You can find a lot of different snacks and they're still cheap, but Beijing is dominated by Sichuan snacks and kebabs," says Zhou, 32, who works at the Beijing culture exchange center, The Hutong.
More on CNN: Beyond the duck: 20 best Beijing restaurants
Zhou, who was born in Zhejiang and raised in Holland, has lived in Bejing on and off since 2002.
To track down the best local street foods, she suggests travelers look for stalls with "lots of Chinese."
"Try the 'normal' food, those are the best and cheapest," she adds. "No need to eat scorpions or sea stars -- they're just there for tourists."
Click the video above to follow Zhou's visit to Beijing's best street food stalls.
More on CNN: This Peking duck video made us really, really hungry
How to find the food stalls in this video:
1. Malatang: Penglaihui Restaurant (朋来惠餐厅), No. 64 Xin Taicang Hutong, Beixin Bridge, Dongcheng District 东城区北新桥新太仓胡同64号; 10 a.m.-midnight; +86 135 8078 3988. Vegetables cost RMB 0.7 per skewer (US10 cents).
2. Jianbing: Nameless pancake stall, No. 28 Mianhua Hutong, Xicheng District 西城区棉花胡同28号, 6 a.m.-1:30 p.m., no phone. Normal pancake costs RMB 4. RMB 1 for each extra egg.
3. Donkey-meat burger: Wang Fatty Donkey-meat Burger (王胖子驴肉火烧), No. 92 Dongsi Bei Da Jie 东四北大街92号 (近十三条西口), 10:30 a.m.-10:30 p.m., +86 131 2156 5643. Burgers with lean meat cost RMB 8 each. Burgers with fatty meat cost RMB 7 each. Donkey soup is RMB 8 per bowl.
CNNGo Shanghai editor Tracy You is a bilingual culture and lifestyle journalist based in Shanghai. She's a fan of history, British TV and Wii Guitar Hero.
Comments