Beijing cuisine

The best way to eat good and cheap in Beijing is to enter one of the ubiquitous restaurants where the locals are eating and pick a few different dishes from the menu. Truth be told, anyone familiar with Western currency and prices will find Beijing a very inexpensive city for food, especially considering that tipping is not practiced in China.

Some of the cheapest and delicious meals can be had on the streets. Jianbing Guozi is one
of the most popular street snacks, eaten from morning till night. This delicious pancake is
cooked with an egg on a griddle, a fried dough crisp is added, & the whole thing is drizzled in scallions and a savory sauce. Hot sauce is optional. Diehard fans often go on a quest for the best jianbing cart in the city.

Lamb kebabs and other kebabs are grilled on makeshift stands all around Beijing, from the
late afternoon to late at night. Wangfujing has a "snack street" selling such mundane fare like lamb, chicken, and beef, but the brave can also sample silkworm, scorpion, and various organs all skewered on a stick and grilled to order.

A winter specialty, candied haw berries are dipped in sugar and sold on a stick. You can also find variations with oranges, grapes, strawberries, and bananas, or dipped in crumbled peanuts as well as sugar. This sweet snack can also sometimes be found in the spring and the summer, but the haw berries are often from last season's crop.


              Beijing Roast Duck

This famous Beijing specialty is served at many restaurants, but there are some restaurants
dedicated to the art of roasting the perfect duck. Expect to pay around ¥40 per whole duck at budget-range establishments, and ¥160-¥190 at high-end restaurants. Beijing duck is served with thin pancakes, plum sauce and slivers of scallions and cucumbers. You dip the duck in the sauce and roll it up in the pancake with a few slivers of scallions and/or cucumbers. The end result is a mouthwatering combination of the cool crunchiness of the
cucumber, the sharpness of the scallions, and the rich flavors of the duck.

Since Beijing has been the Chinese capital city for centuries, its cuisine has been influenced by culinary traditions from all over China, but the cuisine that has exerted the greatest influence on Beijing cuisine is the cuisine of the eastern coastal province of Shandong. Some people say, Peking Duck is Beijing Cuisine, others consider it to be Shandong Cuisine. Beijing cuisine has itself, in turn, also greatly influenced other Chinese cuisines, particularly Chinese imperial cuisine, and Chinese aristocrat cuisine. "The Emperor's Kitchen" was a term referring to the cooking places inside of the Forbidden City, Beijing where thousands of cooks from the different parts of China showed their best cooking skills to please royal families and officials. Therefore, it is at times rather difficult to determine the actual origin of a dish as the term "Mandarin" is generalized and refers not only to Beijing, but other provinces as well. However, some generalization of Beijing cuisine can be characterized as follows: Foods that originated in Beijing are often snacks rather than full courses, and they are typically sold by little shops or street vendors. There is emphasis on dark soy paste, sesame paste, sesame oil, and scallions, and fermented tofu is often served as a condiment.

Well known Mandarin dishes

              Meat:                             

• Peking Duck
• Hot and Sour Soup
• Peking Barbecue
• Mutton Hot pot
• Sweetened Vinegar Spareribs 
• Sweet Stir Fried Mutton/Lamb (Ta Si Mi)
• Plain Boiled Pork (Bai Rou)
• Fried Small Meatballs (Zha Xiao Wan Zi)
• Shredded Skin Salad (Ban Si Pi)
• Cold Pig ears in Sauce (Ban Shuang Cui)
• Sauced Meat (Jiang Rou)
• Pickled Sauced Meat (Qing Jiang Rou)
• Upper Parts of the Pork Hand/Leg (Shui Jing Zhou Zi)
• Three Non-Stickiness (San Bu Nian)
• Wood shavings meat (Moo shu pork)
• Fried Triangle (Zha San Jiao)
• Roast (Mutton/Beef/Pork (Shao Niu/Yang/Zhu Rou)
• Peking Dumpling (Beijing Jiaozi)
• Peking wonton (Beijing Huntun)
• Braised fish (Su Yu)
• Soft fried fish (Ruan Zha Yu)
• Fish cooked with five spices (Wu Xiang Yu)
• Fish cooked with vinegar and pepper (Cu Jiao Yu)
• Shrimp chips with egg (Jin Yu Xi Lian)
• Fish soaked with soup (Gan Shao Yu)
• Family style boiled fish (Jia Chang Ao Yu)
• Sea cucumber with quail egg 
• Fish cooked with five kinds of sliced vegetable 
• Abalone with peas and fish paste
• Meat wrapped in thin mung bean flour pancake
• Egg and shrimp wrapped in corn flour pancake (Hu Bing)
• Fried tofu with egg wrapping (Guo Ta Do Fu)
• Wheaten cake boiled in meat broth (Lu Zhu Huo Shao)
• Fried wheaten pancake with meat and sea cucumber fillings
• Fried butter cake (Nai You Zha Gao)
• Fried cake with fillings (Tang Mian Zha Gao)
• Fried dry soybean cream with diced meat filling (Zha Xiang Ling)
• Dried Soy Milk Cream in Tight Roll with Beef Fillings (Zhua Juan Guo)
• Lotus ham (Lian Rou Zao Fang)
• Pork in broth (Su Zao Rou)
• Goat/sheep intestine filled with blood (Yang Shuang Chang)
• Beef wrapped in pancake (Men Ding Rou Bing)
• Soft fried tenderloin (Ruan Zha Li Ji)
• Meatballs soup (Qing Tang Wan Zi)
• Fried sesame egg cake (Kai Kuo Xiao)
• Pork fat with flour wrapping glazed in honey (Mi Zhi Hu Lu)
• Glazed fried egg cake (Jin Si Gao)
• Steamed egg cake (Wan Gao)
• Lotus shaped cake with chicken meat (Lian Peng Ji Gao)
• Fried thin pancake with meat stuffing (Zha Juan Guo)

 
             Noodles (Can be either vegetarian or served with meat)

• Noodles with Thick Gravy (Da Lu Mian)  
• Naked oats noodle (You Mian Cuo Yu)
  
  Vegetarian
  • Mustardy Chinese cabbage (Jie Mo Dun)
  • Beijing preserved fruit (Hun Tun)
  • Beijing candied fruit (Mi Jian)
  • Hawthorn cake (Jin Gao)
  • Stir fried hawthorn (Chao Hong Guo)
  • Iced fruits (Bing Guo)
  • Watermelon jelly (Xi Gua Lao)
  • Almond drink (Xin Ren Cha)
  • Beijng cheese (Nai Lao)
  • Fuling pancake sandwich (Fuling Jiabing)
  • Thin Millet Flour Pancake (Jian Bing)
  • Thin pancake (Bao Bing)
  • Pancake (Lao Bing)
  • Deep Fried Dough Cake (You Bing)
  • Baked Sesame Seed Cake (Shao Bing)
  • Purplevine Cake (Teng Luo Bing)
  • Shortening cake (Niu She Bing)
  • Glutinous rice cake (Qie Gao)
  • Thousand-layer cake (Qian Ceng Gao)
  • Lamma cake (La Ma Gao)
  • Proso millet cake (Huang Gao)
  • Glutinous rice cake roll (Juan Gao)
  • Glazed steamed glutinous rice cake (Shui Jing Gao)
  • Rice and white kidney bean cake with jujube (Pen Gao)
  • Honeycomb cake (Feng Gao)
  • Buckwheat cake (Ba Gao)
  • Rice and jujube cake (Zeng Gao)
  • Mung bean cake (Lu Dou Gao)
  • Soybean flour cake (Dou Mian Gao)
  • Bean paste cake (Liang Gao)
  • Fried Cake (Zha Gao)
  • Rice cake with bean paste (Hua Gao)
  • Chestnut cake with bean paste (Li Zi Gao)
  • Chestnut broth (Li Zi Geng)
  • Glazed/Candied Chinese Yam (Ba Si Shan Yao)
  • Glazed thin pancake with Chinese yam and jujube stuffing (Tang Juan Guo)
  • Thin pancake of pork fat (You Pi)
  • Sweet flour cake (Dun Bo Bo)
  • Fried cake glazed in malt sugar (Mi San Dao)
  • Freshwater snail shaped cake (Luo Si Zhuan)
  • Chinese "fajitas" (not to be confused with spring rolls
  • Fermented Mung Bean Juice (Dou Zhi)
  • Baked Wheaten Cake (Huo Shao)
  • Sweetened baked wheaten cake (Tang Huo Shao)
  • Bean Jelly (Liang Fen)
  • Sweet Potato Starch Jelly (Fen Pi)
  • Crisp Fritter (Ma Ye)
  • Crisp Thin Fritter Twist (Pai Cha)
  • Crisp Noodle (San Zi)
  • Stir Fried Starch Knots (Chao Ge Da)
  • Fried Ring (Jiao Quan)
  • Fried Dough Twist (Ma Hua)
  • Pea Flour Cake (Wan Dou Huang)
  • Jellied Bean Curd (Dou Fu Nao) 
  • Glutinous rice ball (Ai Wo Wo)
  • Noodle roll (Yi Si Juan)
  • Kidney bean roll (Yun Dou Juan)
  • Dried Soy Milk Cream in Tight Rolls (Fu Zhu)
  • Sugarcoated haws on a stick (Tang hu lu)
  • Millet zongzi (Zongzi)
  • Tangyuan (Yuan Xiao)