Hunan Food in Beijing

This is a long overdue food post about Hunan food in Beijing’s Sanlitun district. Hunan food is spicy like Sichuan food except that the spiciness is far more poignant and less slathered in oil.

It’s my first time eating Hunan food. The flavours escape me now, as I try to remember, but hey if I ever make it back into China, I’ll head out for some Hunan street food.

Restaurant interior.

Piss poor appetizer

Cabbages with chillies. The oiliest of the lot.

Lamb with cumin and spices. Only two pieces though.

More lamb with cumin and spices.

Tofu slices.

Where to find a less preppy Sanlitun

This is Sanlitun (三里屯): Beijing’s equivalent of Clarke Quay. And like its Singaporean counterpart, Sanlitun is upmarket with big brands and chi-chi restaurants. The centre is a pretty collection of buildings with full length glass windows while two-storied shophouses make up the fringes.

Naturally this western wonderland in the far east attracts 20- and 30-somethings with yuan to burn. And how they turn up in droves for medium-rare steaks, Hunan food, giant burgers and other nightlife bric-a-brac.

I actually admire the sleek glass-steel architecture. It’s a nice change from the kitschy white tiled buildings with loud golden characters emblazoned across the front. Beautiful, but it lacks spontaneity and a little heart.

That, I found in an alleyway of dingy entrances and crudely lettered promotions; just past the BBQ seller from Kashgar and beyond an army of cigarette vendors.

There’s Shooters, a shots/cocktail bar where wooden, unfinished decor ruled alongside with loud, beaked-faced youth who snatched dice from long tables with black plastic holders.

Here’s another dive bar, Lau Wu (Tapas Bar – House Rum; Sanlitun Bei Jie, Opposite Tongli Studio; Tel: +86 010 6402 5086), with a Cuban theme. There are mojitos, caprinhas, and cigars. But its best lie in the tall cylinders of rum spiced with bananas, cloves, honey, cinnamon, Sichuan peppercorns, or coffee.

Vodka infusions are more common as its neutral palate absorbs flavours well. But with rum, it has a tropical bite that tampers with whatever’s inside it. According to the bartender, a Beijinger, he was taught how to do it by a Frenchman and it takes a month for the flavours to properly seep into the rum.

If you make it there, go for the spicy shot. It’ll put a sweat on you – even in a howling winter night.

Scenes: Beijing

Let’s fly kites in finger-numbing cold. Kite vendors shiver in bone-chilling winds to sell tiny brightly-coloured squares to anyone who would spare them RMB 20.

They were a whole lot more interesting than the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube.

Burger Gargantuan: Butcher’s Steakhouse

Last night in Beijing. Train ticket to Fuzhou; ready. Stories; edited. Time for dinner.

But nothing like this. And never again.

Butcher’s Steakhouse at Sanlitun north exit serves meats carved straight by the butcher. Its main claim to fame lies not in the quality of the meats, but in its size.

Butcher’s Burger

In particular, the Butcher’s Burger (138 yuan): a 5-lb monster with 1,000g meat patties, half a lettuce, 4 fried eggs, and plenty of other vegetables for a well-rounded meal (more like a day’s worth for most families!).

One can only blame an opportunistic and sadistic turn of mind when the owner created this challenge -- wolf it all down in 2 hours, the burger’s free and your name gets penned in on the wall of fame.

Butcher’s Burger in relation to a normal burger

I and Natalie’s boyfriend, Luke, tried. Oh how we tried. We dived and cut with gusto. Our lips smacked of onion stains and sesame seed buns, while our teeth gnashed at  the crispy lettuce and tore apart meat and runny eggs.

What’s inside it.

We went on and on for half a burger. No mean feat in itself. Our jaws ached from all that chewing. We had come, sawed, and munched, but we were ultimately conquered by this monstrosity.

My ego had taken a beating, and I’ll never make it on their wall of fame. But the Butcher’s Burger had certainly achieved its aim: to stuff, to fill, fare thee well hunger, and hello Peptide.

End game: Dissected in despair

Advice: Go with friends. Share the damn burger and remember to starve for a day and night prior…longer if you can.

The Butcher Burger’s Wall of Fame

Butcher’s Steakhouse

Add: 8 Dongzhimen Wai Dajie (东直门外大街8号) Sanlitun North Entrance  
Tel: 150-1082-1675

Scenes: Beijing

Cities can be utter bitches at times. After all, 18-million people jammed into a relatively tiny space are quite unlikely to be smiling at each other. They’re often scowling or simply indifferent to other human beans.

Yup, beans. The abundance of people in cities resemble soy beans grown in furrowed asphalt.

Friendship store near the Great Wall of China. The main entrances are boarded up and you’ve to enter via the side which leads through like a maze.

Traffic jams are business opportunities for this man who peddles rubber tubings.

Traffic jam in Carpark City.

Ain’t got a place to sleep until my train tomorrow morning.

Ditto.

Can’t fault the sunset at 4pm. It’s gorgeous.

100 Dumplings

Dumplings: meat-filled thin-skinned flour packets.

It’s versatile dish which contains anything edible. Sometimes it could be pork crushed with chives, chopped liver, or shredded shrimp. Perhaps a little donkey for richness. Or salted egg yolk and foie gras mashed into a mellifluous bundle.

The packets are boiled and served with a side of garlicky sauce spiced with chilli oil. There’s also its fried cousin (Gayoza, Pot-stickers; all the same things) – crunchy on the outside but just as flavourful on the inside.

The dumplings won’t win points for looks. In fact, it borders on obscenity with more than passing resemblances to blanched-white shrivelled testicles.

Dumplings | Tien Jin  Bai Jiao Yuan

But this common (even peasant) fare has never been about looks. It’s about how the ingredients fit together in an oh-so Q skin, and how they explode upon  bite to linger on the palate.

There are easily a hundred different variations. Each one as different as night is to day. Ask yourself: “Do you have time and stomach space to try them all?”

Mushroom with bamboo shoots | Tien Jin  Bai Jiao Yuan

Taste notes: Salty, like eating a raddish-less version of Teochew Kway with less pepper.

Donkey meat with herbs | Tien Jin  Bai Jiao Yuan

Taste notes: Rich. It can simply overpower a fragile palate. Best with whisky or stronger alcohols.

Shirmp with chives | Tien Jin  Bai Jiao Yuan

Taste notes: Like a fish out of the sea that’s popped wriggling and alive down your throat.

Tian Jin  Bai Jiao Yuan (Tianjin 100 dumplings)

Add: Xin Wenhua Jie 12A, Beijing, China
Tel: 010-6605-9371
Website: http://www.baijiaoyuan.com

Scenes: Beijing

“I like Beijingers. They’re very straight-forward.” - Alain Cislaghi

I met Alain in Beijing, 2004. He was French-Quebec, owned and stayed in a 4-bed guesthouse situated in a hutong with neighbours pulled straight out of a sitcom, and he was constantly drunk (or in the process of it).

I liked him for his unusual position and outlook on life, and that the Chinese people seemed to genuinely look out for him. That’s strange as the city was filled with folk that’s as cold and as abrasive as the sandstorms that whip through it.

But I guess if you’ve to understand a city, you’ve to stay there for a while, mingle and expectorate loudly.

I’ve captured these images during my month-long trip through China & Taiwan. 

Wahahaha: Come laugh with me

Forbidden City: 1 lonely tree

Forbidden City: Love the sun and how it casts shadows.

Forbidden City: Rise the red guard.

Forbidden City: Forward march!

Streets in Beijing: What does this do?

SWAT: “Sure. Take a photo. But not too close. Please.”

Global Times - Underground security

Written by a Chinese friend whom i met on my travels many moons ago. It’s about Beijing’s subways where the exits and entrances are manned by surly officers and overshadowed by x-ray machines.

A while later, another friend was stopped for having “dangerous” deodorant in his bag. The machine roared and he was forced to show it to the angry faces of the officers on duty. He told me that on his return journey, he simply carried it in his coat while the guards chatted with each other.

While it made sense during the Olympics when nutcases (drunk, simply insane, or merely fundamentalist) had to identified and stopped, now it has lost its meaning – like bureaucracy.

As I write this, there’s a niggling at the back of my head that asks “one-and-done like the Bird’s Nest?”

At least Beijing’s National Stadium is making money from the “daily intake of 20,000 to 30,000 people who pay RMB 50” to wander around the immense empty stadium that’s supposed to hold 80,000 people.

But what are they going to do with 260 x-ray machines? Send it to hospitals?

Source: Global Times - Underground security