Beijing, China: Food Guide
There was no shortage of food in Beijing! Every corner was littered with some sort of restaurant, fast-food or street vendor. Here are some of the places that Peter and I ventured in Beijing!
Mr. Shi’s: delicious dumplings! The dumplings were made fresh and when it came to fillings the choices seemed endless! Peter and I settled for an order of the Mushroom, Spinach, Tomato dumplings and then Shrimp, Spinach and “Rape” dumplings. Still not sure about that last ingredient…so I wouldn’t recommend ordering Rape at other restaurants in China. But as for Mr. Shi’s, I highly recommend.
Xu Xiang Zhai: Vegetarian all you can eat Buffet aka my heaven! The food was d-e-a-licious and all vegan! My plate had bits and pieces of different foods: vegan sweet and sour “chicken,” roasted eggplant, vegan curry chicken, vegan spring rolls…I looked at Peter and said “This is where you can spread my ashes.” The food was SO so good and of course I went for seconds! Or thirds. Okay, who’s counting? Peter was constantly being let down; From when he thought there might’ve been real beef to realizing it was tofu—to when he thought there were egg custards to him biting into it and realizing it was not egg custard. Peter’s total misery and dissatisfaction, just added to my over-all fantastic mood.
Vegan Tiger: Another Vegan nightmare for Peter. We ate dinner with a few of my friends from China that I introduced to Peter: Kathy, Oliva and Davis. Kathy and Oliva had been here before so they were the experts in terms of menu. The plot-twist of the century was when I asked for rice they said they were out. My mistake. I thought I was in China. Anyway, we ordered a bunch of different dishes from noodles, eggplant, dumplings, bun-dumplings, to vegan shrimp spring rolls! One of the dishes was a “build your own dumpling,” which I had difficulty wrapping properly. Turns out this restaurant is Buddhist and instead of ice cold water they served piping hot water in tea cups. Kathy said the Chinese Buddhists believe that drinking anything cold is “bad” for the body. That meant they also didn’t serve any alcoholic beverages which was yet another let down for Peter. Current Score = China: 4 | Peter: 0
Hot Pot: is a huge thing in China. We decided to go to a Hot Pot restaurant near Peter’s dorm that one of his friend’s recommended. Once inside, we saw a whole wall of different foods, which looked similar to an isle at a grocery store. There were no signs giving us instructions, so we decided to wing it and if no one starting yelling at us then we were good. Like a grocery store, there’s a stack of plastic baskets at the door. We each picked up a plastic baskets and picked out food we wanted: veggies, tofu, fish or meat etc. Then we brought the baskets to the front and paid for the foods in our basket. BOOM. They threw in all our foods into soup broth and we had ourselves customized hot pots! YUM!! It was a cool concept and not to mention, cheap.
Street Food: now this is Peter’s slice of heaven. One night we walked through the street market and had lots of interesting "food" on sticks...These ranged from seahorses, snakes and beetles all on a sticks… to be eaten...(!!!) That’s a no for me Dog.
