XI-AN FAMOUS HOT RICE RIBBONS
JUST WHEN I THOUGHT THE SHOW WAS GONNA EXIT FASTER THAN IT ENTERED, ON THE SIDE OF A NEIGHBORHOOD ROAD…
A NEW JOINT OPENED
I must admit, my belated appreciation for the hype of Xi’an Famous Foods, was a slow, reversed progression.
Six years ago before we left New York, it wasn’t yet a thing over there. Then after six years of looming around Hong Kong and then now Beijing, I barely noticed its presence let alone recognizing it as an established “food category”. It was a shameful episode of my negligence, one of which I could only redeem by… well, help you not to repeat my mistake. The first noise I heard from this funnily named Chinese regional cuisine from central-west, ironically, was when a few months ago, I was on my Beijing couch watching America’s Food Network featuring a micro-trending street-eats in New York, called “liang (cold) pi (skin)”. Liang-pi? You mean, the liang-pi they sold from a booth right next to the cash-register in my local supermarket? The liang-pi that periodically showed up on my dinner menu? The liang-pi that, yes, there at the corner groceries as well. And yes, there at the food-courts in malls, too! Now that I’m consciously aware of such thing, the liang-pi that was previously invisible to my radar, now appears to be, actually, everywhere!READ MORE
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