I apologize folks for the tardiness of updates, I am logging on through google China and well, it's in Chinese.

Beijing cuisine

Beijing street breakfast: Carolina and I came upon a cart near where we are staying. For 2 RMB (twenty cents) you can purchase a ping. A ping is uh, well outside of the egg, I am not sure what’s in it: the taste is a mixture of a salty crêpe and a salty omelet. The gentleman preparing the ping and his toothless older friend found amusement in us asking where we were from and the like. The presentation of the finished ping was well dog walkeresque.



Across from Nieves’s flat is a hole in the wall of a dumpling house with a scattering of tables. I have now grown accustomed to being stared at by the locals and at this tiny place where the sanitary conditions ward off foreigners like a lepers’ colony, I was the 6-foot blond with big tits at a USO concert. With our seven-word Mandarin vocabulary, Carolina bravely took the helm as the proprietor of the establishment asked for our order. Carolina surmised that there were only three things served, two types of dumplings and pork buns, which we sampled all of. The dumplings with the side condiments of soy sauce, vinegar and hot sauce were hands down the best I ever had. After finishing the last morsel (here lies the rub) I had this overwhelming thirst. There is a special place in hell of the inventor of MSG next to the inventor of aluminum siding. Funny when you can taste your own mouth and run your tongue over your gums collecting the salt deposits and spitting it onto the street. If you have high blood pressure and want to lose some weight Beijing is ground zero for fat watchers. After 18oz of water and a chocolate bar, the taste of my mouth went away and I was hungry again and craving dumplings. Just typing this I’m thinking about that whole in the wall, the whole tasting your own mouth make you more aware of yourself like yoga but with out moving.

Generally, we have found people very friendly, helpful and curious as so far as to take the time to show us how to eat the food. This was the case with hot pot. Hot Pot is cooking meat, fish, or vegetables in a broth at your table, which is supplied with a burner. We found ourselves on Ghost Street, as people call it here, with over a hundred restaurants serving hot pot. Basically, the hot pot strip. We picked a restaurant using the New York scientific equation

Some form of pricing in the window + the amount of people seated in the restaurant x visual appeal of food on the tables x Hunger = Yeah or Nay.

We were handed a picture menu I feel like a West Virginian here. Choosing raw Pork balls, small thinly sliced steaks, a variety of mushrooms, noodles, spinach, soy and three large beers. The waiter who realized we had no clue, explained with hand gestures and pictures that we needed to order broths. A few minutes later our order arrived, with our blank stares the waiter grabbed a pair of chopsticks and demonstrated how to prepare the food. Dumping the plate of pork into the three broths to cook. The waiter dipped a the thinly sliced steak into one of the broth for about 30 secs smiled and left us to our own devices. The steak was amazingly tender the pork balls had a hint of spice and the mushrooms meaty. Two of the three broths chosen were spicy and rich with flavor. We did damage to the food that would have made a Roman proud. The bill came to 150 RMB ($15) the most expensive meal we have had here.

Carolina’s aunt invited us to dinner at Quanjude a 5-story fine dine restaurant where Kissinger and Nixon, to name a few, ate with the party chairmen. Duck in Beijing is an art; the skin of the duck being the pride of each restaurant and at Quanjude it was crisp and savory. The duck is presented to the table and then sliced, each tables receives a card denoting the number of the duck served since 1864 we had 346088. Bamboo steamers were placed with flour sheets, a side dish of thick sauce and a vegatable to make spring rolls with the cut duck meat. The texture of the spring roll was that of tender succulent meat with crunch of vegetable, crisp duck skin and duck fat. A fatty duck soup with mushrooms was served on the side to round out the fat factor.









Cruising around the city hunger hits you unexpectedly thanks to living better through chemicals you can eat a full meal and never feel full. This ad brought to you by MSG.

After scaling the Drum tower on a half a ping Carolina and I were scoping for food joints. We found a restaurant that matched the equation. Picture menus in hand I picked out what looked to be chicken and ordered beer. Mental note as a photographer I should know better, things never really look like the photo. The dish that arrived was definitely not chicken. From what I could gather it was deep fried bone bites from some animal possibly fish. That said three chopsticks full was more than enough to produce “I don’t like it” out of me.


In Beijing they have an amazing way to disguise salt in many ways a true culinary talent. My palette is still adjusting to the sodium over load, with bottle water in hand and easy access to chocolate I shall go forth and eat.