China: Chengdu Street Foods

I have been getting interesting emails on the food China Olympics 2008 Patrons were able to sample lately. It’s an amusing to see as it reminded me of our last day in Chengdu, China. After having visited the Panda Adventure, we decided to go around the city since our train ride going down south of China will be in the evening. Riding a bus, our eyes caught this highly ornamented looking street that we just decided to go down and check it out.

We stumbled upon Jiang Yuan Gong Sou Street and found old looking establishments, vendor and souvenir stalls and exotic looking restaurants. The statues placed on various points of the streets were really amusing and adds a lively contrast to the old wooden color of the structures along the streets.

But what elated us more (or our stomachs rather) is having found this “Good Eat Street” at a corner along Jiang Yuan Gong Sou Street. It has an intersecting street full of stalls with numerous street foods being sold. Initially I tried a set of Rice dumplings (5 RMB), Beef Pancake (5 RMB) and a Broken Hearted Noodle (4 RMB). The rice dumpling wasn’t really a fave, the noodle was amusing as the vendor told us it will lift up your spirits. The noodle is thick and cool and what made it flavorful was the chili soup that comes with it. As for the lifting of the spirits? I’m not sure as it taste ordinary for me. Hehe. The Beef pancake is on the crunchy side and good, I wish there were more meat inside though.

Looking for more food variety there’s this interesting BBQ stall behind us. Though I still don’t know how to speak Chinese, hand signals sufficed even buying food there on my own. I grabbed a couple of Mushroom and Tofu on Sticks. I love their BBG, especially their chili sauce.

To wash down what we were eating I grabbed one of those ready Plum Tea Juices for 3RMB (With plum seeds still on the juice). It was a refreshing drink to alleviate the strong flavors of the food. There are other treats we tried, I especially like the baby potatoes on chili my friend ordered but I wasn’t able to take photos.

It was an interesting late afternoon lunch and we simply enjoyed the place staying there for most of the afternoon. The food is cheap and a lot to choose from. There are other interesting delights there like this one stall we found selling dried starfish, seahorse, live mini scorpions, grilled silk worms, cicadas, beetles, crickets, grasshoppers and some I couldn’t recognize. It was straight out from a Fear Factor delicacy which I think I’m not ready to try out yet. Maybe if I was hungry and hadn’t eaten anything before I would. But would you?