It turns out that you have been going to "Fake Niu Street". This is the most delicious alley in Beijing.

The weather in Beijing is getting cooler.

The lingering fear of the last wave of epidemic has gradually disappeared from the six districts of the city. People can’t stay at home all the time. It’s time to go out for a walk.

Don’t go too far, wander around in an alley, where old trees and small houses can provide shade, bite a popsicle, open a bottle of Arctic Ocean, listen to the old gossip in front of Wang Xietang, and regain a little bit of popularity. , more interesting than going to the mall.

Tu Chong Creativity

Especially the many alleys in Beijing sound very tempting.

Are the fried beans at Chaodou Alley delicious? Will mutton alley be a street full of mutton-shabu-shabu? I have come up with a romantic painting in my mind.

Beijing people are always simple and direct when naming places, saying what they mean. The ancient capital has existed for thousands of years, and there is no shortage of literati. The people have the greatest rights to name places. Everyone knows that there is Miaoying Temple, but everyone still calls it Baita Temple. The common name always works well.

Including naming alleys after food - they clearly wrote the city's favorite bites on the map, telling you that you can't miss these meals when you come to Beijing.

First of all, the well-deserved number one is mutton -

There were actually five "mutton alleys" in Beijing, distributed all over the place, with the same name.

As far as Beijingers are obsessed with sheep, this makes sense. Apart from wool, they eat whatever grows on the sheep -

Slice the brains and roast them on the broiler. Sizzling with oil, the hind legs are cooked in a pot, the peach red plums and white plums are as bright as clouds, the ribs and waist are cooked into roasted lamb, the sheep and scorpion hot pot is delicious, come and stretch the noodles, the fried belly is as crispy and tender as fresh cucumbers, the sheep tail is fried with sesame tofu, and the sheep bones Make soup, cook noodles and marinate, cut the lamb head meat into thin slices and serve with wine. The vendor who sells the lamb head meat even has the horns hollowed out and filled with the unique flavor of Sichuan peppercorns and salt!

Nothing is wrong. With such a huge demand and so many processes, there are only a few mutton alleys, so we really can’t afford the food that Beijingers love so much.

One of the most famous is the Mutton Alley near Fuchengmen - in Mr. Lao She's time, the Xisi Archway area was dominated by the business of slaughtering live sheep with big knives. But later, its landmarks were already the Geology Auditorium, later the Gemstone Company and the Xisi Baozi Shop.

Near Dongdan, there used to be a mutton alley, which was later renamed Yangyang Hutong. It was also famous for its delicious food.

However, its true identity is that it is the first stop for Japanese cuisine in Beijing!

This is not the old Yangyang Hutong. In the past, Yangyang Hutong ran east-west.

People's Voice of Beijing

In the 1920s, this place became the capital of Beijing. It was one of the gathering places for Japanese food, and there was once a "Flag Pavilion" with both catering and accommodation functions, called Changchunting, which was considered to be the highest-standard Japanese food at that time.

Before the Anti-Japanese War, there were many Japanese people near the Dongdan Archway and Chongwenmen. The concentration of Japanese food in this area was no less than that of the Lantern Street in Liangmaqiao today - Hu Shi’s first Japanese meal was there. Beijing and Akutagawa Ryunosuke ate.

After liberation, Japanese food in Beijing still existed until the Cultural Revolution. In 1983, the "Kappo Baiyun" at the Friendship Hotel continued this trend. The history of Beijingers eating Japanese food started in Mutton Alley. It's been a hundred years.

Photographed by Lu Xinzhang and others

There is probably only one mutton alley that still sells mutton. This one is better than many others. It is genuine and guaranteed to be replaced by a fake——

In the Ming Dynasty, it was also called Mutton Alley, and later it was called Raw Meat Alley. In contrast, there was a Cooked Meat Alley next to it. They are today's Shou Liu Hutong and Input Hutong, both in Niujie, a paradise for carnivores!

At Hongji Snack Bar, bring a bag of loose meat and toothpick meat, and don’t forget to wait a little longer for the beef and green onion buns to come out of the pan. Take a delicious bite; next door to Nianji Delicatessen, buy soy sauce beef and follow the shopkeeper’s tips Er Yuan Tang goes back to cook noodles; the queue for Shabu Shabu in Jubaoyuan is long, and even Ke Xuan has it; Dashuntang is a halal stir-fry that neighbors have known for decades, and Turpan is the first Xinjiang restaurant in Beijing... and this is just cooked food. , next to the beef and mutton market, if you want to cook or grill, what else is there?

Even if there is only one "mutton alley" in Beijing, it would be quite enjoyable.

Dianping: Xiaobaozhi loves to eat fish

In addition to mutton, the other thing Beijingers love is sauce - Yonghegong has a sauce house on the east side, a sauce house on the west side, and Gangwa City. There are Dajiangfang Hutong and Xiaojiangfang Hutong.

Not only do they really love eating soy sauce, but they also elevate it to a lofty status:

For anything called “sauce XX”, the protagonist is definitely not the main ingredient at the end, but the main ingredient. It must be the sauce.

When eating soy beef in Beijing, it must be real "sauce" beef. There must be small grains of soy beans in the soft cooked meat, instead of just stewing it with soy sauce, clear sauce and yellow sauce. The treatment is different.

Another example is Tianfu Hao’s braised pork ribs. The skin is purple-black and shiny, and it is stewed to a pulp, but it doesn’t have any flavor of aniseed, and it’s not even too salty. It’s the fragrance of the sauce and the original taste of the meat.

Tianfuhao official Weibo

And there are pickles. Pickles were made in Jiangfang Hutong in the past——

Even though they are called pickles today, in Beijing , pickles are of higher quality than those pickled with salt alone. There were no pickles in the imperial meals of the Qing Dynasty, but there were plenty of pickles, such as melon sauce, radish sauce, eggplant sauce, nectar, carrots, peas, cucumbers and hazelnuts stir-fried with diced lean pork and yellow sauce to accompany the meal, nicknamed the "four major sauces" of the palace.

"Collection of Famous Chinese Dishes"

In addition to mutton and sauce, any food found in Beijing's alleys is indispensable.

For example, Duofu Lane was originally called Tofu Lane, and there is also a Tofu Pool alley north of the Bell Tower. Beijingers love to eat tofu. The Tingli Restaurant has a brand of tofu. The Jinan Restaurant and the Muslim Restaurant sell hotpot tofu. Porridge with wine includes tofu mixed with shallots and tofu mixed with Chinese toon. Snacks include braised fried tofu, Wang Zhihe stinky tofu, etc. Fried steamed bun slices smeared with sesame oil and chopped green onion, this is a unique dish in the world.

"Chinese Food Culture"

It is worth mentioning that it is the simplest and can still be eaten today, but few people hear it called chicken shaved tofu: it is actually extremely tender. Put the Nan tofu on a plate, add salt and sesame oil, sprinkle with a handful of green onions, and eat while mixing. The tofu is broken into pieces, like chicken claws.

Today I went to Baoruimen Ding Meat Pie or Warwick Meat Pie and asked for a plate of tofu with green onions and this is what was served. At first glance, it looked like a fool, but it was actually quite right.

Dianping: The Ordinary World_1953

There is also Beiguanchang Hutong, which used to be called Enema Alley. There is a dedicated alley selling fried enema. How many people do you think love eating it? . Shaojiu Hutong to the south of it was formerly called Shaojiu Hutong. There was a winery passed down from Guanglu Temple in the Ming Dynasty. Fried enema is also good with wine.

Dongjiao Minxiang, which used to be Dongjiang Rice Alley, specializes in glutinous rice, jujube cut cakes, rice dumplings, rice cakes, moxa, and donkeys rolling around. It would be impossible without it.

Manma Kitchen

The Youguo Hutong near Zhao Dengyu Road no longer exists. In the past, it was called Fried Ghost Hutong. The deep-fried ghosts in Beijing are not only fried dough sticks, but also steamed rice dumplings, sweet fried dough sticks, etc. Maybe fried dough cakes are also included. People all over the city eat this. It can be paired with tofu, noodles, tea, soy milk, soy juice, adzuki bean porridge, and bean soup, but the sesame cake and oil ghost are the most iron-clad partners.

Changying Kaiyizhai’s fried food is still abundant, but most of the “oil ghosts” of old Beijing have disappeared

Some alleys are also famous for eating, but that kind of food Disappeared or become rare, and the area has lost its original function. Like Fried Rice Alley, Fried Noodle Alley -

Fried rice is mostly seen in Mongolian restaurants today. It is served with a big pot of milk tea and a small bowl of yogurt. It is no longer an everyday food. If fried noodles had not become popular in the past two years, many children would not know that this is what they ate during the "One bite of fried noodles and a handful of snow" during the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, and they would have thought it was Shanghai fried noodles and fried Yifu noodles. It has long since faded out of people’s lives, and naturally no one sells it anymore in the alleys.

Every alley with a fragrant name is a trace of the way Beijingers once lived. In an era without reviews, Internet celebrities, or even the Internet, this is a food map woven by the people here for the world.

Nowadays, the meaning of the food map with the same name as the Hu in Beijing has changed with the changes of the city.

Fangzhuangchang Hutong has become synonymous with fried noodles. Everyone knows how to go to Daxing Hutong to drink noodles and tea. In the past, Menzhang Hutong did not sell braised noodles, but now you can choose.

Noodle Tea in Daxing Hutong

The only thing that has not changed is that the people in this city are still chasing the blood of food, flowing in every alley.

The running water does not compete for the first place, but the continuous flow. There is no such thing as delicious food in Beijing.

Some of the pictures in this article come from the Internet

Reference materials:

[1] Wu Yunyun. A preliminary study of restaurants in Beijing in the early Republic of China (1912-1927) [D]. Zhejiang Gongshang University, 2019.5.

[2]Sun Xiaoyan. Japanese food popular in Beijing[J]. China Foreign Service, 1996(04):6-10.

[3]Wang Yuebo . Eat Yue happily [OL]. Yunting app, 2020-2021.

[4] Liang Shiqiu. Shaobing and fried dough sticks [M]. Yashe sketches (Part 1 and 2), Tianjin, Tianjin Education Press , 2006.6.

Author - VJ

Editor - VJ

Photography - Futao Editorial Department

Design - Director Bao