Apart from our Christmas Dinner we've been eating food from street vendors, street markets and from small family restaurants. The standard and quality of food has been much better than what we ate in Russia and Mongolia. In fact it seems like the less the place looks like a restaurant the better the food is. Most of the family restaurants cook the food on the street and then serve it inside.
The food is always good and always very cheap but the problem is they never have English menus or speak English and in some cases they don't even have menus. Our general criteria for choosing a restaurant is if it is busy with locals then it must be good.
Sometimes we point at other peoples food or if they are cooking food outside we point at that and other times we say "what do you recommend" in Chinese, well we don't say it but we have the Lonelyplanet iPhone app with a Chinese phrase book that will say it for us or else we can show them the text. We soon realised that they did not serve drinks in some of these restaurants so we would buy a bottle of coke before going in. They didn't seem to mind, in most cases they thought we were funny.
So far I think we've managed to avoid dog meat and donkey meat. We've seen these in restaurants that have English menus but I can't be 100% sure that we've not ate them. We have never intentionally ordered them but most of the time we don't know what were are eating!
There is one thing of skewered "meat" that we had which I have my suspicions about....
The next two dishes we just ordered by pointing as we saw other people order them. One was a spicy bread which was good and we never figured out what the other dish was. We thought it was potato when we pointed at it but it wasn't. We think it might be some type of tofu but we are not certain.
Here is some food we got from the street vendors. The first looked like chicken in some bread and the second was an egg with some meat cooked in batter. Both were cooked in front of us and were very popular with the locals so we thought we should try them. They were so good that we ordered another one of each.
One of the night markets we found in Beijing had lots of different types of odd and weird food such as scorpions, snakes, silk worms, cockroaches and starfish.
I thought silk worms and cockroaches was taking it a bit too far so decided to try scorpions instead.
In one restaurant the chef came out to look at us as we seemed to be a novelty in the restaurant. He didn't say anything but just stood looking, eventually he came over and corrected how we were holding the chopsticks. Then he got another order so he went back into the kitchen but as soon as he was done he was back staring at us eating again. A few minutes later he came over placed his shoe beside mine and started laughing as my shoe was double the size of his.
Dumplings that were cooked on side of street but served in a "restaurant"..
The food is always good and always very cheap but the problem is they never have English menus or speak English and in some cases they don't even have menus. Our general criteria for choosing a restaurant is if it is busy with locals then it must be good.
The Night Market in Beijing
Sometimes we point at other peoples food or if they are cooking food outside we point at that and other times we say "what do you recommend" in Chinese, well we don't say it but we have the Lonelyplanet iPhone app with a Chinese phrase book that will say it for us or else we can show them the text. We soon realised that they did not serve drinks in some of these restaurants so we would buy a bottle of coke before going in. They didn't seem to mind, in most cases they thought we were funny.
Dinner in a typical restaurant
A Chicken Dish..
So far I think we've managed to avoid dog meat and donkey meat. We've seen these in restaurants that have English menus but I can't be 100% sure that we've not ate them. We have never intentionally ordered them but most of the time we don't know what were are eating!
Noodles with Chicken, I think.
There is one thing of skewered "meat" that we had which I have my suspicions about....
Chicken and I'm not sure
The next two dishes we just ordered by pointing as we saw other people order them. One was a spicy bread which was good and we never figured out what the other dish was. We thought it was potato when we pointed at it but it wasn't. We think it might be some type of tofu but we are not certain.
Spicy Bread
Not Potato
Uncooked Not Potato
Here is some food we got from the street vendors. The first looked like chicken in some bread and the second was an egg with some meat cooked in batter. Both were cooked in front of us and were very popular with the locals so we thought we should try them. They were so good that we ordered another one of each.
Kinda like an Egg McMuffin except not..
It tasted like Chicken..
One of the night markets we found in Beijing had lots of different types of odd and weird food such as scorpions, snakes, silk worms, cockroaches and starfish.
Range of food at the night market
I thought silk worms and cockroaches was taking it a bit too far so decided to try scorpions instead.
Scorpions on a stick
Crunchy Scorpions
In one restaurant the chef came out to look at us as we seemed to be a novelty in the restaurant. He didn't say anything but just stood looking, eventually he came over and corrected how we were holding the chopsticks. Then he got another order so he went back into the kitchen but as soon as he was done he was back staring at us eating again. A few minutes later he came over placed his shoe beside mine and started laughing as my shoe was double the size of his.
I think the "not potato" is tofu. Unfortunately i can't say the Chinese name of that dish !
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