From the end of the Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, Tianjin cuisine gradually developed from scratch, and the most well-known one was the "four big steaks and eight bowls". Tianjin people pay attention to "four flat and eight stable", like "four" and "eight", Tianjin has "four great calligraphers", Peking Opera "four famous Dan" is from Tianjin, the giants have "Tianjin eight big people", the restaurant has "eight big cheng", so eating has "four big steaks, eight bowls". The famous dish related to Li Hongzhang, "Li Hongzhang Miscellaneous Dishes", was included in one of the "Eight Bowls" in Tianjin, also because Zhang Zuolin ate one of the dishes, and the "Eight Bowls" spread to the three eastern provinces. In the 1980s, Tianjin Daiho "Tianyifang" opened a shop in Tokyo, Japan, and the "Eight Bowls" spread to Japan.
To say the story of "four big steaks and eight bowls", we have to start from the opening of Tianjin in 1860. At that time, Tianjin was full of miscellaneous places, and famous teachers gathered in the restaurant, and the genres and flavors of the dishes were diverse. In the early years, there were three categories of Tianjin restaurants: one was a large restaurant, and the Houjiahou area of Beidaguan concentrated the "eight major dishes" of Tianjin cuisine restaurants - Ming Licheng, Ju Decheng, JuQingcheng, Juxingcheng, Yisheng, Juxingcheng, Julecheng, Dehecheng; the second was the "Er meat restaurant" that sold high-end and high-end meals; the third was a small restaurant that mainly used dumplings and pot stickers and also engaged in stir-fry dishes.
"Four big steaks, eight bowls" are table-top dishes launched by large and small restaurants. The "four big grills" use the cooking technique of "grilling", which usually includes grilled whole chicken, grilled duck, grilled elbows, grilled square meat, grilled sea cucumber, grilled gluten, home-cooked fish and so on. "Eight bowls" use large bowls to hold, there is a difference in thickness, meat and vegetarian, dishes can be replaced at will, enough to eight Tianjin traditional dishes can be, you can also according to the season and market raw material supply, the hand of the stove master and other reasons, freely change dishes.
The "coarse eight bowls" include braised fish fillets, braised shrimp kernels, boiled chicken, osmanthus fish bones, braised slippery fish, single gluten, yuanbao meat, large balls, etc., which are popular dishes and economical; "fine eight bowls" have fried green shrimp, braised chicken shreds, roasted three silks, whole stew, sea cucumber balls, yuanbao meat, braised chicken, fish belly shark fin; "su ba da bowl" The most famous is the "Stone Gate Kan Vegetarian Restaurant" on DongmenmenGong South Street, which are fried lanterns, braised gluten, vegetarian braised (rotten skin, gluten, wood ear, bean sprouts, etc.), respectively. Braised goose neck (made with rotten skin rolls, etc.), fried seeds, vegetarian meat, roasted eggplant, croquette balls, etc.
There used to be an old chef who said that at that time, whenever there was a joy, birthday, or funeral in Tianjin City, or a "bastard" to celebrate and make trouble, he had to set up a feast, and there were hundreds of tables at every turn, and he liked to use this kind of "eight bowls" that were high and low, elegant and customary. Sometimes, wine and vegetables and cold dishes are added to form "eight plates and eight bowls" to spread the table.
In terms of taste, the "eight bowls" pay attention to the stew soup and grilled brine, which is characterized by salty, fresh, rotten, soft and tender, such as the taste of the fish fillet is salty and sweet, the characteristics of the elbow and the grilled meat are soft and rotten, and the characteristics of the fried shrimp are tender. This is also a typical feature of Tianjin cuisine. There are more than 30 kinds of traditional Jin cuisine, such as guan roast fish strips, poppy bunned carp, soft fish fans, red grilled shark fin, swallow vegetables, sour sand purple crab, Koryo silver fish, fried birds, and chestnut wild ducks, all of which can enter the "eight bowls", so "eight bowls" is synonymous with Jin cuisine.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the "coarse eight bowls" were one yuan and two corners of the ocean, and the "eight bowls of thin eight bowls" were one yuan and eight corners of the ocean, which was equivalent to more than one thousand yuan now. The most used "eight bowls" is to estimate the merchant warehouses in the area of Yi Street and Dahutong. The old customers in the northeast and northwest and the silk merchants in the south live in the inn, and the innkeeper calls for the "eight bowls" to entertain, and the old guests eat with their mouths full of oil, and it is difficult to do business.
Legend has it that during his residence in Tianjin, Li Hongzhang, the governor of Zhili and the minister of Beiyang, set up a banquet at home and invited foreigners, due to the rush of time, the raw materials were incomplete, the chef was embarrassed, and used the remaining clinker stored to cook a dish. Later, this dish spread to the folk and was called "Li Hongzhang Chowder".
During the Republic of China, the literati and inkers thought that the name "Li Hongzhang Chowder" was not elegant enough, changed to "family portrait" passed down to this day, is a big dish in Tianjin cuisine, fine feeding, there are shark fins, abalone, dried scallops, fish bones, fish belly, fish lips, shrimp meat, cooked white meat, magnolia slices, etc., salty and umami mellow, bright juice, belongs to the typical dishes of "fine eight bowls".
Li
Because Zhang Zuolin, the king of the northeast, liked it, the "eight bowls" also spread to Fengtian (Shenyang). Zhang Zuolin often went to Tianjin after entering the customs and bought a lot of real estate in Tianjin in the name of his aunt's wife, and he most often went to Tianbao Class in Nanshi To find Xiao Li's mother "Dou ShiHu". Zhang Zuolin's biggest hobby in life is playing cards and fighting Shihu. On this day, playing cards until midnight, Xiao Li's mother brought a dish of boiled chicken, which is one of the "eight bowls", and Zhang Zuolin ate satisfactorily.
A few days later, Meng Enyuan, the Jilin overseer in Tianjin, invited Zhang Zuolin to eat a "fine eight bowls" at the "Juhecheng" banquet, including a pint of Guan Yan, braised mullet eggs, shark fin four silks, braised fish money soup and so on. Zhang Dashuai remembered the "Eight Bowls" in Tianjin, which spread far and wide, and the big restaurants around Fengtian and Changchun sent people to Tianjin to learn the craft of the "Eight Bowls".
Zhang Zuolin
The "Eight Bowls" spread to Beijing, Baoding, Shijiazhuang during the Republic of China, and were also introduced to Japan in the 1980s. At that time, the most representative restaurant of Tianjin cuisine, "Tianyifang", restored the "four big steaks and eight bowls" that had been broken for many years, and opened a branch in Tokyo, Japan, and Yang Zaixin, a famous chef in Tianjin who was a teenager who was trained by Juqingcheng, one of the "eight majors", served as the head chef of Japan's "TianyiFang", and the "eight bowls" were not in japan. Later, Zhao Keqin succeeded Yang Zaixin as the head chef and once cooked authentic Tianjin cuisine for former Japanese Prime Minister Fukuda, which Mr. Fukuda greatly appreciated. (Text: He Yuxin)