A guide to the top rated street food of Xi’an

At the end of our trip round Gansu province we made our way to Shaanxi province, and the capital Xi’an. With only one night in town, we looked up the top five street foods on DianPing, which all seemed to be concentrated in the Muslim Quarter. The main thoroughfare through the Muslim Quarter is Huimin Street, but the best-rated street food is to be found down the smaller alleys to each side.

Guantang Baozi

Our first stop was at Jiasan for Guantang Baozi. It immediately became apparent this wasn’t street food, but a proper restaurant, but it smelt good, so we persevered. These are traditional soupy buns, but with lamb instead of the more usual pork filling found in Beijing and Shanghai. They’re served in the steamer in which they’re cooked, and accompanied by a small selection of turnip pickles, radish and a few mild chillies. The lamb version was pleasant, but a poor second to the soupy buns of Shanghai. There are also beef and “three flavours”, a combination of lamb, mushroom and prawn.

There are only a couple of drink options and we chose the sour plum juice.

The walls of the restaurant appear to be covered with pictures of celebrities, none of whom I recognised, but they looked happy to be there.

Xiaosurou

Ding jia xiaosurou (Mr Dings “Little crispy meat”) was anything but. It looks like a mix of fatty mystery meat and gravy but is actually reasonably lean lamb coated with glutinous rice. This is served with spicy cabbage fried in vinegar. Disturbingly, even the Chinese tourists were turning their noses up without trying what looked like an oily bowl of fat, but despite initial appearances, it was very tasty.
At one point, three American university jocks walked in wearing hockey shirts, sat down and looked carefully at what we were eating. Without exchanging a word, they silently stood up and walked out.

Biang Biang Mian

Not far from Mr Dings we came upon our first Biang Biang Mian shop. Although highly recommended, we didn’t stop as we didn’t want to fill up with noodles. The shop sign is notable as the character for Biang, with its 57 brush strokes, is too complicated to work as a standard-sized computer font.

Street Food Stalls

Finding ourselves in the street food market (as opposed to all the restaurants that had been listed as street food..) we couldn’t help but sample some of the simpler dishes on offer. Sichuan-spiced deep-fried crispy broad beans were extremely moreish; quail eggs skewers, brushed with sesame were delicious but filling and the big bags of chilli peanuts would be perfect with a few beers.

Rou Jia Mo

We left the Muslim area to visit Fan Ji La Zhi Rou Jia mo, a famed Xian rou jia mo restaurant on Zhu Ba Shi, opposite the Drum Tower.
By now it was getting late, and the messy restaurant was home to some even messier individuals who’d dropped in for dinner. There was a wide selection of fried foods on offer, but we stuck to the speciality of rou jia mo, a layered wholewheat bun filled with meat. In Xi’an the meat is usually beef, whilst Gansu often has lamb, and some areas serve Pork. To be honest, none of us could figure out what the red meat was, and whilst it wasn’t unpleasant, the whole thing was a little too dry and chewy to be that enthused about. I’d guess that earlier in the day (or just earlier in the eating session) it would be a lot more appetising.

Yang Rou Pao Muo

The most famous dish in town is probably the Yang Rou Pao Muo, a bowl of lamb soup served with bread. The bread is shredded and added to the soup as a cheap and filling dish. We passed the Tong Sheng Xiang restaurant twice, but unfortunately both times it was just too busy to get a table, so we missed out.

Along with Persimmon cakes, is there any other street food we should try on our next visit? Also, I was rather tired at this point, so did I get the Drum & Bell Towers the right way round?