Produced by | Tiger Sniff Youth Culture Group
Author | Cucumber soda
Planning | Wooden boy
Caption figure | unsplash
This article was first published on the tiger sniff young content public account "That NG" (ID: huxiu4youth). Here, we present the face, stories and attitudes of today's young people.
Some time ago, there was such a passage circulating on Weibo, which made everyone laugh -
Beijing strives to be promoted to "City of Gastronomy" within five years.
Just a short line, but it reflects a hint of black humor and absurdity.
Everyone is quite amused when they laugh at Beijing.
"The quickest way to eat in Beijing: take a taxi to the airport and take a two-hour flight to Guangzhou."
At the bottom of the Weibo of Beijing Food Recommendation, you will often see some comments that are bitter and happy:
"Family, there are too many Beijing food, what KFC, McDonald's, IKEA, Shaxian snacks, Anhui plate noodles ..."
Obviously, the more urgent question is when Beijing will be able to get rid of poverty and take off the hat of "gastronomic desert" in a few years.
If nothing else, first get off the throne of the gourmet desert Top 1 and rest for a while.
Beijing is on top of the "Food Desert" list. Image source: DT Finance
In order to find out whether Beijing is a gastronomic desert in the end, this time, we let Beijing natives and other people sit together and talk about it - Beijing, is it delicious or not?
Is Beijing really a food desert?
vol. 166
Anchors: Cucumber Soda, Muzi Tong, Slag County
Recording, editing: CC
After talking about this episode, I found that in the eyes of Beijingers, Beijing's food is remarkable, ancient and modern, romantic and poetic; in the eyes of foreign north drifters, they feel the "lower limit of Beijing food", which may be a disappointed takeaway, a punch card that does not meet expectations, and a greatly discounted experience.
All in all, Beijing is really not very tasty, but it is not an absolute desert.
Since we want to discuss the gastronomic desert, we must first distinguish what Beijing cuisine really is.
In the eight major cuisines of southern cuisine (Lu, Sichuan, Cantonese, Su, Fujian, Zhejiang, Xiang, Hui), Beijing cuisine has no place, and even the food in the pan-North China region is aphasia. The cuisine of North China has a common ancestor: Lu cuisine, a representative of the culinary culture of the Yellow River Basin. Following the salty and strong charm of Lu cuisine, the first impression of Beijing food on many foreigners is mostly: heavy, thick and too salty.
Strictly speaking, the Beijing diet can be divided into court cuisine and civilian snacks. But after all, thousands of imitation meals per capita are not something that the North Drifters can touch on a daily basis. The so-called Beijing gastronomic desert may not be true for Qianlong and Cixi, who taste dozens of dishes every day, but for Beibu, it is a real dietary pain.
In 1980, the Japanese documentary "Chinese Food Culture" recorded the famous imitation cuisine in Beijing, Tuyuan B Station.
First of all, Beijing's civilian snacks are a set of tastes that have been eliminated by the mainstream.
In the Beijing Tandian Punch Card Raiders, the most common local foods are: sugar oil cakes from the Black Kiln Factory, sugar flower rolls from the Steamed Bun Shop at the Gate of the Palace, noodle tea hidden deep in the hutongs, brine boiling of small intestines, and fried livers at the corner of the Drum Tower. The desserts are concentrated in the Fuhua Zhai Rao Shop, the dim sum box in Daoxiang Village, and the fried creaks at the Gokokuji Snack Bar.
I believe you can also see that these snacks are either sewn into the water or carb, the calories are not low, and the taste is very heavy.
Source: Little Red Book
Compared with the exquisite morning tea represented by Guangdong Province in the south, the black and wrinkled appearance of Beijing snacks is not very good-looking, and the left and right shots cannot take good-looking punch card photos. Palatability is not friendly, eating is always mushy throat eyes, as a local specialty, compared with Chengdu Changsha Guangzhou snacks, the degree of spread is lost on the starting line.
The most sympathetic example is the bean juice charred circle , a snack that even young people in Beijing are not easy to eat. It is a nightmare for outsiders, but for locals, only a large drink can taste the fragrance, on the short video platform, there is an old lady who even has to use a warm pot to drink a large bottle every day.
Burnt bread with fritters, choking; noodle tea, difficult to swallow; fried liver, inexplicably bizarre taste experience; brine, too salty. Locals always advise outsiders: "Hey, eat more times and you'll get used to it". But this is not an evaluation of a delicacy, it is more like a compromise on taste.
Boiled, image source public reviews
Beijinger @ Slag County said that in the era of lack of products, the taste of the people is destined to find a "substitute for meat". Since you get ingredients that are not fresh, you must find a way to make it better. The reason why the boiled and fried liver is full of vitality is a kind of profile of the distant era - the pursuit of meat taste engraved in the genes.
High oil, high salt, and thick sauce are destined to make the taste threshold of civilian snacks higher, and even only belong to the older generation of Beijingers. @Slag County told us that if you want to find the pure taste of old Beijing, you have to go outside the fifth ring road to see, because the indigenous people can not afford to open shops in the city center.
Can the shops in the city center meet the tastes of the majority of social animals? Obviously, it's almost meaningless.
Chain stores and industrialized diets have destroyed many of Beidrift's expectations of a "simple single meal." 996 social animals walking on the way to work at 10 o'clock at night, it is difficult to find a heart-warming small shop on the takeaway software, in addition to the cookie-cutter cooking bag, which is a small barbecue that will diarrhea at a glance.
Sha County, a late-night canteen for social animals
The rapid urbanization process in Beijing has accelerated the disappearance of small shops downstairs and street stalls, which is the so-called "fireworks and fires within the five rings". Accidentally seeing a tricycle selling dirty skewers under the Shuangjing Bridge can make people ecstatic for a long time.
The city of Beijing is so big that if you live in Chaoyang and want to go to Haidian to find a restaurant, it is difficult to do it unless you are a food blogger. Even if you go to a nearby restaurant, the map will always show a distance greater than 4 kilometers. The North Drifters, who have no means of transportation, either brush up on the takeaway software after working overtime, or go to a nearby convenience store to buy a bucket of instant noodles or oden boiled food.
For example, if I were to go to the famous "casserole house" for a meal, I would have to face a distance of 13 kilometers, which is not a long way to Beijing.
This is why North Drift has always been portrayed as the most miserable migrant worker in the country. Suffering from rent, but also suffering from not being able to eat delicious hot and cheap meals.
Even the private food list of Beijing native @Muzitong always writes dissatisfaction. Aside from the national chain, it's hard to see a restaurant that everyone loves in Beijing. This is a bit of a shame.
Beijing's gastronomic desert is not a newly born concept. Beijing has been scolded for years on the issue of "eating."
In addition to the taste and visual can not meet everyone, there is a hidden reason is that the literati and inkers have written the food of the old capital too well, which has raised the expectations of the people of the whole country. However, when I came to Beijing as an adult, I found that the filter was caught off guard.
It is not that the taste of the food has changed, but it is missing the magic pen at that time, and now no one wants to find such a food review in the public reviews and the Little Red Book.
When I was reading Lao She's "Camel Xiangzi" in high school, I followed Xiangzi and swallowed at the tofu brain that had just come out of the pot:
After resting for half a day, he went to the bridge and ate a bowl of old tofu: vinegar, soy sauce, pepper oil, minced leeks, which were scalded by the hot snow-white tofu, emitting a bit of fragrant taste, so fragrant that Shoko wanted to hold his breath; holding the bowl, looking at the dark green leek mince, his hand could not stop shivering. After taking a bite, the tofu boiled a path through his body; he added two small spoonfuls of chili oil to his own hands.
"Chinese Food Culture", Source B Station.
"Camel Shoko" writes about drinking bean juice:
It was completely bright, the room was deserted and bright, and the two of them held the bowl and drank it, and the sound was loud and sweet. No one spoke, and they ate the cake oil ghost in one go.
Watching Liang Shiqiu's "Yashe Talks About Eating", it has pulled Beijing's food to a new height.
After thinking about it for seven or eight years, after returning home victoriously, one winter night, I heard the shouts of the sheep's head meat vendors in the deep alleys, immediately crawled out of the bed, called the vendors into the doorway, I sat in a lazy chair and watched him under the dim illumination of the oil lamp, pulled out a snowy thin knife, crossed the blade of the sheep's face, the slice was thin, and then took out a sheep's horn covered with gauze and sprinkled some pepper and salt. I carried a plate of sheep's head meat, re-burrowed into the bed, put a piece of sheep's head meat on the pillow into my mouth, and unconsciously entered the sleep, very satisfied to solve the addiction.
Write fried enemas:
The big enema at the backdoor bridge is made by a real pig farm, which is well-known, but it is too greasy. Although the enema of the vendor is not an intestine in the name of the intestine, it is only in the shape of an intestine, and the strips of sleigh made mainly of mustard powder are cut into irregularly shaped small pieces, fried on a large flat oil pan, fried to the ground, dipped in garlic salt juice and eaten. It is said that the oil is not ordinary oil, but oil boiled from horse meat and other things in the workshop, so it has this strange smell. Smelling that oil alone can make people sick to death, but fried enemas, spray incense!
Write about eating in Beijing throughout the year:
Spring cakes are eaten in the spring, followed by yellow croakers on the market, followed by bighead fish. Just at this time, the backyard pepper tree sprouted, just pinched down to cook fish. After the fish season, the clams are in order. Wisteria blossoms, eat cane cakes, rose blossoms, eat rose cakes; and jujube mud big flower cakes. In the summer, "the old chicken head only goes up to the river", followed by diamond horns, lotuses, lotus roots, pea cakes, donkey rolling, love nests, and appear together. Crystal elbows are commonly found on the table, and roast lamb is sung and sold in the street, at this time, tender cucumbers and new garlic heads should come from time to time. Together with the autumn breeze, you can smell the sugar fried chestnuts first, then the cannon roasted shabu lamb, and the seven-pointed and eight-ball large crab.
Write about sweets to eat and drink on a daily basis:
The reason why Beiping's "sour plum soup" is particularly good is because of the use of rock sugar and the addition of rosewood osmanthus flowers and the like. Xinyuan Zhai is the most standard, the street is sold in vain, and the addition of natural ice is also quite harmful to hygiene. A soda that sells sour plum soup with "glass powder" and a small bottle with a glass ball as a lid. "Dried fruit" is also an important side business, made from dried apricot persimmon cake fresh lotus. The "rose dates" are also delicious.
Selling "sugar gourds" in winter, it is not very good to wrap maltose or dilute sugar, and it is delicious to dip in rock sugar. All kinds of raw materials can be made of sugar gourd, but "mountain red" is authentic. Others such as begonias, yams, yam beans, dried apricots, walnuts, water chestnuts, oranges, grapes, kumquats and so on are good.
During the Republic of China, Beijing also popularly called takeaway "box dishes". Lao She loves to "call the box":
Once the chrysanthemums were in full bloom, Lao She invited friends to come to enjoy the flowers, and when it was time to eat, I saw an old guy carrying two large food boxes into the courtyard. This large food box is three feet in diameter, flattened and rounded, and divided inside. When I opened the lid, I saw that it contained ham, duck, sauced meat, smoked chicken, and small belly, all cut into thin slices, which was very delicate.
Liang Shiqiu also called the box.
"In addition to restaurants that specialize in duck sales, such as Quanjude, they are sold by cheap shops (i.e. sauce elbow shops). Roast duck can also be eaten in the restaurant, and since the closure of the old cheap shop outside Xuanwai, it is necessary to take Bao Huachun at the mouth of the goldfish hutong in the East City as a rising star. On a phone call at home, Bao Huachun would send a small liba to send a roast duck from a warm lead iron barrel, which was drizzled in oil and hot. Along with it, he also manages steamed lotus leaf cake shallot sauce and the like. He was in public at a small table next to the table, good craftsmanship, pay attention to the thin slices, each piece has skin and oil and meat, followed by a plate of lean meat, and finally the duck head duck tip, and it is done. The host was happy, the reward was two hangings, and little Liba thanked him happily. ”
@ Mu Zitong has eaten Liang Shiqiu's "slippery yellow cabbage", which is actually an egg, because there were many eunuchs in Beijing in the past, and the word "egg" should be avoided. This dish uses lard to "slip" the yolk into a paste, then add the diced water chestnut, and finally sprinkle the diced ham, and spoon it with a spice spoon to eat, which is a delicacy that both she and Liang Shiqiu love.
But for outsiders, not to mention that they can't eat yellow cabbage, in a large number of unworthy water army evaluations, they can find a reliable Beijing restaurant with golden eyes, and they have to put in a lot of time costs and trial and error costs. In order not to step on the thunder, we can only focus on the shabu lamb in NiuJie, the roast duck in the four seasons, and the barbecue season in Houhai, which are the few stable choices.
The famous barbecue Wan, "Chinese Food Culture", Source B Station.
The end is often that if you press Tu Suoji, the last thing you eat into your mouth is difficult to swallow, and you experience an inexplicable and disappointing taste adventure, shouting: Just this?
We expect it too much, which may be one of the reasons why Beijing has been criticized for its gastronomic desert.
The embarrassing thing is that what can justify Beijing cuisine is not the local food in Beijing, but the well-known Beijing Office.
In beijing's local shop exploration strategy, the Beijing offices of various provinces can help Beijing food bloggers complete half of the KPI.
The burning noodles and white meat of Lizhuang in Yibin Guest House have made spicy young people queue up in long lines, and even won the Beijing public review must-eat list.
Image source: Dianping
The snow-clad bean paste and pot-wrapped meat of the Jilin Office in Beijing have made the children in the northeast cry.
The snail powder and duck foot pot of the Guangxi Office in Beijing smelled and went.
In addition to accommodating the tastes of the provinces, it is not difficult to find food from all over the world.
Pho pho from Vietnam, canned beef stew at Moscow restaurants, seafood pasta from Anne's Italian restaurant...
Beijing's local food is becoming more and more powerless in the face of the world's cuisine.
Its biggest problem is that it is not extremely attractive to young people, but closer to an exploration of traditional diet. The queues at the entrance of traditional snack bars to buy cooked food are often elderly people. Speaking of "old Beijing", the first reaction of young people is not whether it is delicious or not, but the vibrato passage of "our old Beijing is this one when you open your eyes".
Embarrassing Beijing, in this way, steadily put on the hat of "gourmet desert". Wronged? There are many unpalatable cities, why does Beijing rank first in gastronomic desertification?
It is because it has to accommodate more "mouths" than other cities, and these "mouths" come from all over the world, and it is difficult to adjust. It just so happens that Beijing is not a place known for its deliciousness, and it is not convenient to eat a satisfactory meal.
If on any day, the social animals who work overtime until late at night can drink a bowl of piping hot wontons downstairs, and can relax their hearts and walk into a small shop on the street to eat -
Then maybe on this food desert, there will be an oasis.
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