Xi’an
Xi’an’s Muslim quarter provides a fantastic opportunity for hunting down great street food. The narrow streets here come alive after dark. The open fronted restaurants spill out onto the pavement with tables and chairs and huge barbecues for the grilling of mutton skewers. I ate a fantastic meal perched on a plastic stool sharing a rickety plastic table outside one of these places. The dishes included: thick cold noodles in a dressing made from chilli oil, sesame paste and vinegar (simple but delicious); something translated on the menu as ‘fried jelly’ which appeared to be cubes of some sort of starch fried in plenty of spices and chilli; ’spicy hot beef tripes’ which are teased from their skewers into a bowl of sesame paste and chilli oil; and of course ten spicy grilled mutton skewers, hot from the coals. All delicious and along with a half litre bottle of beer the lot cost me less than two quid.
July 22nd, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Wish I was with you in the street cafes of Xi’an - sounds lovely. Eating whole birds is a bit minging though. Eating the scorpion sounds similar to my experience of eating guinea pigs - tastes like shit but a good story. Loved the video of the herdsman on horseback - makes me look forward to meeting up with you guys even more - I’m hoping you’ll be in Laos/Vietnam because I hear the food is amazing. And OMG do you realise that if you type Planchant into Google your webpage is the first of 22,200 hits! Is there an equivalent term for Googlewhack for that honour? Over and out.
August 4th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Yum yum, bet the kebabs were tasty. Think we missed a trick there! Will have to go back sometime.
yL
August 4th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
We are enjoying all those photos ……….but need the explanations when you get home. Carry on snapping, Matthew!
PS I LOVE the pinny, Matt!
August 7th, 2008 at 8:19 am
@jan: Sorry when I have some time I’ll try to add some comments. I also need to go through and separate the wheat from the chaff. There are a lot which need deleting.