Must-Try Street Food When Visiting China

For just a few tens of thousands of dong, you can taste rustic dishes on the streets of China, many of which have a long history.

Leisurely strolling on the streets, enjoying the bustling atmosphere and discovering the traditional flavors of Chinese cuisine is a pleasure that any tourist wants to try when coming to this country. Here are some popular dishes:

Braised pig's feet and trotters

Braised pig's feet is an elaborate dish, usually only eaten at family parties or celebrations. But in China, this traditional dish is commonly sold on the sidewalk. Tourists can even eat it while walking and watching the street. Many museums in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou... also display this dish solemnly, introducing its long history and its place in Chinese life.

The dark brown and shiny skin of the pig's feet and trotters, along with the rich flavor without being greasy, can conquer any picky diner. Depending on your appetite, you can choose a small pig's feet portion, priced at 30 RMB (Chinese Yuan) equivalent to 100,000 VND, or a medium or larger size, priced at 50-60 RMB.

Large skewers

What could be more appealing than when you are hungry and passing by a fragrant grilled skewer shop? To suit the strong consumption capacity of the Chinese, most shops sell large grilled skewers such as whole squid, whole frog, whole fish, whole chicken thighs...

These dishes are usually lightly cooked. When you order, the owner will grill them for 5-7 minutes and cover them with sauce and spices. Just watching the owner work can make you hungry. Then you just enjoy the deliciousness of the dish, both visually, olfactory and gustatory. Each of these large skewers costs from 10 RMB to 20 RMB, depending on the type.

Sugar Cane and Blown Sugar Candy

Anyone who has ever watched a movie or read Chinese literature knows about sugared gourds and sugar candies, popular snacks with a history of thousands of years. Nowadays, sugared gourds appear in every corner of China. Originally just sugar-coated apples, gourds now come in a variety of flavors such as cherry, grape, strawberry, and cost about 10-15 RMB per skewer.

Blown sugar candy is considered a dish of "artisans", because only skillful owners can make elaborate candies, with various shapes and many eye-catching details. From familiar animals in daily life, to species that only exist in legends, characters in stories, in movies... all can be blown by artisans into vivid shaped candies.

Mixed fruit and large ice cream

The fruits are mixed together and drizzled with sauce.

On many streets, there are fruit salad and mixed fruit stalls selling by weight, with a common price of 9.9 RMB for 250 grams (130,000 VND per kilogram). You can freely choose from dozens of toppings such as strawberries, grapes, kiwi, apples, melons, mangoes, tapioca pearls, jelly and countless types of nuts. The vendor will chop the ingredients you have chosen, mix them with yogurt or yogurt drink and then weigh them to calculate the price. A box of mixed fruit for two people usually costs around 100,000 VND, enough to fill you up.

Ice cream is also a very popular snack in the country of a billion people, so you can easily find all kinds of ice cream on the streets. There are types that look very similar to the subsidy-era ice cream, only a few thousand VND each, and there are also large ice cream servings in cups as big as beer jugs, priced at over 100,000 VND. You can choose from dozens of ice cream flavors depending on your preference.

Traditional cakes

There are hundreds of traditional cakes in China that most foreign visitors can’t pronounce, but are worth trying. Some are made fresh that day, while others are packaged beautifully and can last for months, making them great souvenirs.

In the old quarters, you can find bakeries that are over 100 years old, bustling with customers, with dozens of different types of cakes and candies, beautifully shaped for you to choose from. A box of ordinary cakes costs only a few tens of thousands of VND, while there are also types packaged in a "royal" style that cost millions of VND.

Street food in China is strictly controlled. Most restaurants have public price lists, often with photos of each dish. Kitchen utensils are clean, and there is no trash or sewage around the restaurant. There are no tables, chairs, umbrellas, or billboards on the sidewalk, everything is kept indoors. Many restaurants only use environmentally friendly and healthy items such as paper bags, paper cups, wooden spoons, and paper straws.

Trinh Hang

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