Do you like traditional street food? Residents of Beijing love them. On weekends you can meet whole families strolling down the street of Wangfujing - the most popular treats is a paradise candied apples and all sorts of seafood - sea horses, starfish, squid.
Coming to this country, you should be aware that Chinese cuisine and Europe have nothing in common. No one it chops, potatoes, cheese, spaghetti bolognese, nobody uses or butter. Chocolate occurs only in the form of small lipstick, for example. Ferrero Rocher, and never as a full plate. You can get candy bars, but so far we have seen only a Snickers and Dove. Candy colorful and shiny papierkach turn out to be pieces of meat, and dried pieces of octopus, they seem to be the best snack. Ice cream is flavored with green peas and potato chips flavored with lemon or cucumber.
What should be sweet, salty turns out to be, and what should be salty is sweet. Sometimes it ends up a big surprise when, for example, buy a cake with apricot and suddenly it turns out that the apricot is an egg and sprinkle with strips of dried meat, but generally discovering more and more new goodies, gives us great pleasure.
Sometimes in the evening we go out on the street and we try to grill "food on a stick." In our neighborhood, but also in many others, it is very popular. When it is getting dark, the sidewalks begin to deploy people with their stands. Sometimes they have a hot plate, and sometimes a handful of hot oil. In addition, they have impaled on sticks food: cauliflower, broccoli and many other vegetables that do not even know, mushrooms that look poisonous (but they are not, because I've tried), tofu in various forms, seafood and various meats in the various forms. To choose the color. Usually we take approx. 6 - 8 sticks and pay approx. 10 yanów.
In our district, we have master "of steam," which quite often visit and who was always very happy, as we come. In the blast furnace bakes cakes with tiny pieces of meat, and then lubricates sauce, sprinkled with green onion and parsley, and on request, also makes sausages. We usually take two, because then the snack longer serves us as a full meal.
As an aside I will add that the Chinese sausages are unusual taste, which I had never experienced before. I do not know what is causing it, but it is very specific.
In the tourist parts of the city, you can also come across a lot of different delicacies, but they are generally much more expensive. People break their strange outfits and prepare food in a traditional way. Hence, there can come across rice roasted in bamboo, oysters with garlic, worms, crabs on a stick, black corn, and many, many other things.
For the main meal of the day usually we go to one of the pubs in our area. There have decided on a dish with rice or pasta. I often order the tomatoes with egg or liver (which before coming to China not eaten about 15 years), a lot of experimenting with meat.
Recently, we experienced it in a hot sweat, so the restaurant, which specializes in it, we go once or twice a week. The refrigerators are lined with additives, which itself is applied to the bowl. Most of them are impaled on a stick. The choices are, of course, vegetables and meat, but we find there also a lot of balls and stuffed dumplings. On the shelves next to the pasta and dry accessories.
With the filled bowl goes to the checkout and pay (our dishes usually cost approx. 12 - 14 yuan). Then the food is taken to the kitchen, and then coming back, already cooked in the soup which is delicious. The obvious advantage of this type of restaurant is that yourself can choose what will be the food. Besides soup, choose absolutely all the ingredients, and this, for me, is the ideal solution.
