Biang Biang Mian

In keeping with the noodle theme I've apparently been focusing on in my street food reviews lately, here's a dish notorious not so much for its taste but for its name. Specifically, the way the name is written. Biang Biang Mian is a traditional street food in Xi'an, and it uses one of the most ridiculously complex characters in the entire Chinese language. So complex that they haven't created a unicode version of it for computers--I have to use a picture.

Be glad you don't have to sign your checks with that.

Behold the character "biang!" It has 58 separate strokes, and requires most people to use mnemonic devices to remember how to write it (if they ever bother to write it at all). This is almost certainly the most complex character you will see in modern China. Several more complex characters exist, but they are archaic and virtually never seen. Biang, on the other hand, graces the signs on Xi'an store fronts selling Biang Biang Mian.

Nobody is really sure what the origin of this word is, but there are lots of fun folk etymologies floating around out there.

All right, enough about the name, the real question is how does it taste? For a food with such a ridiculously complicated name, it's actually very simple ingredient-wise.

The noodles are long and very wide (some people liken them to belts). They are served swimming in a chili-red oily soup with some mutton and chives. Like many spicy foods in China, the chili here is considered to keep you warm in the winter and cool in the summer (due to the sweat). On a scale of 1 - 10, I would say the spice is no greater than a 6 or so, so if you don't get along with spicy foods, this might work for you.

The verdict? Simple, tasty, and filling. Great for lunch or dinner on a cold winter's day in Xi'an.

Kaifeng Pulled Noodles

One well-known hometown dish that has escaped the confines of its native city is the Lanzhou Beef Noodles (兰州牛肉拉面) (Lanzhou Niu Rou La Mian). "La Mian" means "pulled wheat noodles"; the operative word there is "la." The method used to create these pulled noodles is both unique and lots of fun to watch. Starting with a block of dough, the noodleer (pardon me for the invented word) grabs the ends and swings it up and down to stretch out the dough to arms' length. He then brings the ends together, halving the length, and again grabs the ends and bounces. As the dough stretches out longer and longer, he keeps folding and bouncing until the original block of dough is one incredibly long thread of dough. The noodleer cuts off the folded ends, leaving himself with a handful of long, round noodles. Here's a neat New York Times video demonstrating the process.

The best noodleers make this whole process look remarkably easy, tempting one to try it at home, though I have been told it actually takes years of practice to get it just right. The noodles are boiled and then served in spicy, oily soup with chili and beef. Though Lanzhou is way out west in Gansu Province, you can find this special dish in small shops in virtually all Chinese cities. Almost any Chinese person you talk to will be familiar with these spicy noodles.They are truly one of the most famous dishes in China. Which is why it came as quite a surprise to me when I learned that Kaifeng, an ancient city in Henan Province, offered their own take on pulled noodles: Kaifeng La Mian. The noodles are pulled out in just the same way in Kaifeng as they are in Lanzhou. The difference lies in the way it is served.

Where the Lanzhou noodles are known for their spicy chili flavor, Kaifeng La Mian are delightfully sour. They come with a generous pile of cubed winter melon on top, and a bit of mutton for flavor. The noodles are served in soup, but they aren't swimming in it like their Lanzhou brethren. The sour chunks of melon--kind of a rarity in Chinese street food--are really a welcome experience for the taste buds. Kaifeng is renowned for incorporating a wider variety of flavors into their street food than many other Chinese city. I enjoyed my noodles immensely and came away wondering how it was that the Lanzhou La Mian had spread so thoroughly across China, but the Kaifeng La Mian--equally delicious and very different--had barely made it past the city borders. In a way it's kind of a shame (to be honest, I liked the Kaifeng noodles better), but on the other hand, it can serve as a nice reward to the people that make their way off the beaten path and into Kaifeng. It's a small but lovely city that is well worth a visit. Especially for street food lovers.

Kaifeng La Mian shouldn't cost more than 5 or 10 RMB and are easiest to find in the fantastic night market in Kaifeng. Just look for the guys swinging noodles around like jump ropes.

Old Friend Noodles

You have to love a food with a good back-story. Regardless of the story's historical veracity, it adds a fun context for a dish. The signature street food in Nanning, Guangxi—Old Friend Noodles (老友粉) (lao you fen)—happens to be a food with a fun little back-story to it. The story, as told to me by my friend Tiantian, goes something like this:

A long time ago, a man named Zhou owned a tea shop. Every day for many years an old man came to drink tea and soon became friends with Zhou. One day, the old man didn't come to the tea shop. Zhou went to the man's house and found him deathly ill. Wanting to do something for his ailing friend, Zhou went back to his tea house and whipped up a dish of rice noodles, bamboo shoots, garlic, fermented beans, chili, beef, and peppers. He ran back to the old man's house and fed him the noodle dish. Miraculously, the noodles cured the man of his illness and he lived or many more years. Zhou's dish became legendary in Nanning for its healing properties and is now a staple throughout the city.

I don't know if that story has any basis in reality or not, but I don't think that matters. It's a nice origin tale for a yummy dish. These days, the dish looks like this:

The rice noodles are long and slippery, like fettuccine. The noodles are soft when the dish is served, and they slither right down your throat with ease. As you can see here, they do tend to clump together, so you'll have to do some good old fashioned Chinese noodle slurping.

The soup base is oily and moderately spicy. To my mind, the bamboo is the most distinctive feature of this dish. The bamboo slices are a bit sour and add a firmer texture to the dish.

It's worth noting that locals do believe that the old friend noodles have some salubrious properties, possibly attributable to the spicy chili opening up your pores (although there are much spicier dishes available nearby if you're trying that theory out).

This dish shouldn't cost you more than about 10 yuan. It's available all over the city, but the best is in the fantastic night market on Zhongshan Lu. The bottom line? If you are looking for a warm, hearty meal with a neat history, this will fill the bill (and you).

Dou Hua Mian

As much as I hate to admit it, not everybody is interested in eating delicacies like pigs' brains or stinky tofu. Perhaps you're one of them...I don't know. For people like this, travelling through China can be a daunting prospect. China is full of foods that are unusual to folks accustomed to Western food, and some of the less intrepid among us, in their hesitance to dive whole hog (in a manner of speaking) into the Chinese experience, survive in China on McDonald's and KFC. This post is for those people.

Chinese food--even Chinese street food--has some great gateway options for people who are reluctant to eat the more adventurous foods. A classic foreigner dish in restaurants, for example, is the Xihongshi Chao Dan (西红柿炒蛋), or tomatoes and eggs. It tastes great, and all of the ingredients are completely recognizable to a foreign palate. In the realm of street food, one great gateway option I recently tried is called Dou Hua Mian (豆花面), and I had the great pleasure to eat it in Zunyi. Dou hua is basically very soft tofu. Sometimes it's translated as tofu pudding. Mian just means noodles. Here's a picture of the dish as it was prepared for me in Zunyi:

The ingredients are as follows: flat, fettuccine-shaped noodles; dou hua; mint leaves; chives; pork; peanuts; a bit of spicy sauce (optional). Reader, it tasted just like an Italian noodle dish. The dou hua tasted almost identically to ricotta cheese (which, I suppose, is why vegans use tofu in their lasagnas). The taste was so familiar to my Western palate, it almost didn't seem like Chinese food. But Chinese food it was. And street food, at that.

To you, oh timid-stomached foreign tourists, I say that you needn't be afraid of Chinese street food. Judicious, yes, but afraid? Certainly not. The Dou Hua Mian in Zunyi is a perfect example of a nice gateway between Western food and Chinese street food. It can be yours for the low price of 8 yuan.

Re Gan Mian

If you go to Wuhan, the one must-try dish is the Re Gan Mian (热干面). This dish is a staple for residents of Wuhan, typically eaten for breakfast (but available any time of the day). The Chinese name translates literally to "hot dry noodles." It's worth noting that that "hot" refers to the temperature and not the spiciness. Re gan mian is simple, but quite tasty. The noodles are made a special way so that they do not stick to your teeth. They are long, round noodles, akin to spaghetti. They are pre-cooked the night before so that when you order them, they only need to be flash-boiled for about 30 seconds. After the boiling, the cook drops them in a bowl, tops them with sesame paste (sometimes peanut paste, but sesame is more authentic), and your choice of pickled vegetables, radishes, scallions, sour vegetables, and spicy sauce (la jiao). All that remains is to mix it up and eat.

This stuff is delicious. Most noodles in China are served in a soup of sorts, which is why re gan mian (which is not served in a soup) is called "dry." The sesame paste adds a nice grainy texture to the noodles, which are just the right amount of sticky. Re gan mian will only set you back about 3 - 5 yuan, which is a great price for a filling breakfast. Highly recommended.

Duck Blood Soup

Oof! It's been a busy few days since I last posted. Since I last wrote, I have been to Suzhou, Nanjing, and Hangzhou. Today I will be heading out to Hefei, in Anhui Province. Before that, though, a review of one of Nanjing's street foods: Ya Xue Fen Si Tang (鸭血粉丝汤), or duck blood soup.

This is a local specialty in Nanjing, and quite tasty. The soup has an oily broth with a touch of spiciness to it. The bowl is densely packed with vermicelli noodles, long and slippery like the worms with which they share an etymological base. The noodles don't have much flavor themselves, but they function superbly as a base for the broth and the duck's blood. Naturally, the highlight of this dish is the duck's blood itself. Upon hearing the name, you might suspect the blood to be the liquid basis of the broth in the soup. In fact, the blood has been fermented and is served in solid blocks with the shape, texture, and consistency of tofu.

The taste, however, is quite unlike tofu. It's a bit hard to describe, actually. It doesn't have the iron-y taste you might expect from fresh blood, nor does it taste like duck. That being said, there is a very clear taste of an undefined "meat" in the blocks. Sort of like a meat-based broth--you can tell it came from an animal, but it doesn't exactly taste like beef or chicken.

You can find this dish in restaurants and on the streets around the city. Perhaps the best place to look is near Fuzimiao (the Confucius Temple). Expect to pay around 5 - 10 Y per bowl.