If you are a food lover like me, I’m pretty sure you love Chinese cuisine.There is so much variety in China that each city deserves a whole post for itself. Beijing is home to some of the most famous dishes from China and also one of the easier cities for a tourist to visit without knowing how to speak mandarin “普通话”(putonghua).
Since Beijing is on the northern side of China, it gets pretty cold during winter which also isn’t the best climate for rice, this had some influence on their cuisine using a bit more of wheat than rice, and because in order to survive freezing temperatures requires some extra calories or fat it ended up with lots of sugar, deep fries and hot soups.
Probably the healthiest and best plates would be found at restaurants and local eateries, but being a tourist it is very difficult to find the best amongst thousands of options everywhere. So, I’d recommend for convenience and best use of your time while visiting to go to places like “Nan Luo Gu Xiang” street and restaurants near the Forbidden city at Donghuamen street. At Donghuamen East to the Forbidden city you’ll find several restaurants to choose from and at “Nan Luo Gu Xiang” pedestrian street you can try all the deep fries, desserts, unusual snacks and street food that Beijing is famous for in a single long street.
Here is a list of the dishes I consider a must from Beijing.
1. Peking duck
Duck has a lot of fat, but the way it is served in Beijing is actually quite healthy. You won’t just get a big piece of meat and bone, they carefully cut the best and most savory parts and slice them for you to enjoy, they’ll also remove the extra fat and leave the crispy and tasty skin for your delight. This is the right way to eat peking duck, it will be served with very thin wheat steamed pancakes (Chūnbǐng) so that you can wrap the meat, add some sauces (sweet bean or peanut sauce) and greens (spring onions and cucumber) as you may prefer.
2. Jian Bing
This is great for breakfast, it is kind of a crepe/pancake with egg that wraps spring onions or scallions, savory sauces (usually spicy sauce, but optional) and crispy fried wonton skin. This is kind of a street food and you will only find it in the morning near the hutongs.
3. Hot Pot (Huo Guo)
A different way of having soup, you will get a boiling pot in the center where you will cook every ingredient that you order. You can put almost everything in there. There are different versions depending on the province but here you can have any kind if you look for it. Although mostly influenced to have Mongolian hot pot up north. You might want to look for Sichuan hot pot which is very spicy.
4. Steamed buns (Baozi)
This fluffy, delicious fist sized buns are usually stuffed with pork or sweet fillings and although available through out the day they are preferred as breakfast. Be careful of ordering too many of these because they’ll fill your stomach quickly.
5. Dumplings (Jiaozi )
These are quite famous all over the world, mostly the pork/chives filled dumplings which are similar to Japanese gyozas. You can have them fried, steamed or with soup. I recommend you try them on several places they are all different. You can find these on many form or figures and with so many fillings. The ones I consider you should definitely try are with pork/chives, shrimp/celery and the soup dumplings (my preferred ones).
6. TangHuLu
You can find it everywhere and all year round, it’s a very simple snack/dessert. This is candied fruit, the local version is with Chinese hawberry which has a different taste but you can also find with strawberries.
7. Street Food
Now if you feel more adventurous go ahead and try everything that you can find at Nan Luo Gu Xiang street, there is so much to choose from. This is different, so follow up this post for more details.
The previous list is about the things you must try while having a quick view of Beijing and should be enough if you don’t want to experience every single kind of food.
Luis Castro's Blogs 