Ask a Laobeijing: What Are Your Favorite Foods?

By Dominique Wong

Photo by Holly Li

We met Meng, 58, selling newspapers on Xiang’er Hutong.

What are your favorite cuisines and food memories?

I’m from Beijing so I like eating dumplings, noodles and other Chinese food. I have tried Western food before but mainly fast food places like KFC and McDonalds. But I’m unaccustomed to these flavors – they’re too different from Chinese food.

My family enjoys cooking together. We usually cook simple Chinese dishes such as mapo doufu, gongbao jiding – this type of thing. I prefer to use less salt but am liberal with spice.

I used to enjoy dining at Qinghai restaurant near my home but it’s since moved. It was a government-style restaurant and the dishes were very delicious – similar to [Gui Jie restaurant] Dongxinglou.

Eating in general is quite expensive now, though. About 30 years ago, 10 yuan could last for a whole month.

I really love dumplings. I used to make them in Xi’an and even have my own recipe, which uses seven filling ingredients: tomato, egg, chives, fennel, cucumber, spinach and meat.

I’m pretty fast: in half an hour I can prepare, cook and eat the dumplings I make! First you need to boil the water, arrange the filling ingredients and then prepare the dumpling shell.

Before – around 1984 – I worked in Iraq and India. There was fighting going on during this time. There were a lot of other Chinese people there so we would all cook and eat Chinese food together, although I still enjoyed some of the local food, like the chicken leg rice. There was also a nice tomato, egg and bean dish that was very delicious.

I also like the Indian-style curry. I would definitely love to go out and eat these dishes again in Beijing. I can try anything.

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