Every morning, we generally wake up around 5 or 6am, and wait a second, then make our way onto the streets in search of some food. America has no concept of street food (other than say a hotdog cart) so we’ve just been indulging at nearly every opportunity we come across.
Usually we just head out, off of the main street and down a promising hutong (side street). We’ll pass a lot of spots that just seem to be packed with people, all of them hunkering down and grabbing a bowl of steaming soup. But this they serve Chinese breakfast soups naturally and they’re just not nearly as appealing as even regular soup for breakfast. Many of them seem to be of the egg-drop/wonton/hot and sour variety that we have back in the states. So soup is a no go for breakfast here.
We nearly always pass by some vendors selling steamed buns (baozi) and I can never turn those down. So that’s been breakfast for the past few days. Today we also found some steamed rice cakes wrapped in palm leaves (or banana leaves) with beans in them – not so crazy about the beans but the rice part was good.
Leah also tried some of the eggs that we kept seeing everywhere. Apparently what they do is boil the egg, crack the shell, and then soak it in a dark tea so that the egg can soak up the flavor.
On the way back from today’s breakfast excursion, we decided to be fancy and stop at the UpDown 9 restaurant.
It was quite good and a nice middle ground between faux upscale and street. Just a comfortable spot that the locals also eat at where we tourist can go and not worry about being ripped off to shreds because the prices are all printed on the menu.
I even got coffee.
They didn’t have rice made so I had to order a noodle dish. Beef and noodle something – but it was really good. Leah also got a noodle dish and it actually was very similar to a dish that my mom makes from the Philippines called pansit.
Then walk back to our hostel and get ready for the day’s adventures. That’s breakfast nearly every morning – except for the few times we have it prepared at the hostel we’re staying at. Sorry about this VERY photo intensive post. I think that I’m just too excited about having a internet connection that makes it possible.
