We did find a great vegetarian restaurant in Beijing at the bottom of Hou Hai lake but many street food vendors sell meat based buns and snacks, however the sugary fruit on a stick is quite a good little snack and not as sugary as it looks! As we travelled south we came across stinky tofu, this you can smell way down the street before you even pass it – not sure it’s for everyone and the smell was too off-putting for us to try!
You can also get a variety of beers and spirits to compliment your meal.
We found a mandarin phrasebook for £5 whilst visiting the 798 Art district which had a whole section dedicated to food and eating out. Not only was there a description of how to order and how words should be pronounced but the Chinese symbols were also alongside each word so we could show the staff directly what it was we wanted. Still this wasn’t always successful! Ordering vegetables, tofu and a pork dish equated into pork, vegetables and tofu in every dish! But they will taylor what you want especially in the street style open restaurants. Of this is an exciting part of travel, you can’t read the menu, it’s all in traditional Chinese symbols, and so we had to point at the book and see what would come! “Mifan” always got us the rice though!!
(to be continued)
