Bing It On: Variations on a Breakfast Classic

The legend of the jianbing has long captured the imaginations of Beijingers. Short-term visitors may never learn what it’s called, but they return home with unruly cravings and unhelpful descriptions. The intrepid and desperate may even try to recreate “that egg-crepey thing we got off that cart” with such improvisations as Sriracha sauce and fried pork rinds, only to be taunted by the phantom flavors just beyond their reach.

Those of us who call Beijing home are thankful for the jianbing’s ubiquity – it’s the always-dependable breakfast option that includes a teppanyaki-style show of swirling, egg-cracking and flipping. Everybody has their go-to cart; everybody knows the extra-delicious triumph of catching it when the griddle is hot and the line short.

Some say the jianbing hails from Shandong, invented by none other than the legendary Zhuge Liang. Others stake a claim for Tianjin, harrumphing that the pure mung-bean batter used there is far superior to the hodgepodge five-grain versions available here. The Beijing faithful prefer the chewiness afforded by flours with gluten, which the mung bean lacks.

That’s before we get to everything else. One egg or two? Green onion? Cilantro? Then there are the color-coded sauces: cherry-brown bean paste (tianmian jiang), coral-pink fermented bean curd, forest-green leek flower sauce, and the black-brown-red sparkle of the chilli sauce. Finally, there’s the crowning glory of fried dough … but which do you prefer? The thin bubbly cracker known as baocui or the thick cruller known as youtiao? In a perfect world, we could use our jianbing preferences for the purposes of identification, right alongside passport number, blood type and mother’s maiden name.

Since it’s hard enough for anyone to agree on jianbing orthodoxy, we may as well just go full-on heretical and enjoy some variety. Here are some interesting options we’ve come across lately.

Jianbing Monkey 煎饼猴子

The canvas of a nice, round crepe begs for a bit of color and experimentation. Fortunately, the Henri Matisse of jianbing vendors has opened up shop at Xisi Beidajie. At Jianbing Monkey, the adventurous can sample the egg crepe in the following flavors: seafood, steak, Greek beef and Italian. The combinations may be risky but the ingredients are not; everything is prepared fresh in their shop, from the sauces to the baocui and youtiao.

In the Italian jianbing with baocui (RMB 17), the Chinese sauces are replaced by a rich homemade tomato sauce. We found it flavorful with its notes of basil, but in the end, we might have liked it better on a plate of pasta.

The Greek beef, which we also had with baocui (RMB 12), was a little more successful, with seasoned ground meat playing peek-a-boo between the layers of crepe and crispy dough. It’s no answer to their debt crisis, but as an afternoon pick-meup, it did just fine.

Lastly, we tried the “special seafood” variant (RMB 10). Our super-sleuth taste buds detected squid, fish and perhaps a bit of cumin in the sauce. We had been favoring the baocui, but after being persuaded by the owner to try his youtiao, we might be converts. The cruller holds its pleasantly chewy texture a little better than the standard baocui retains its crispness in the saucy wrap.

The owner also understands the value of a gimmick, promising freebies to any customers who: A) kiss their sweetheart for at least ten seconds, B) follow Jianbing Monkey on Sina Weibo or C) wear a jersey supporting their sports team – anything from Guoan to Deportivo Wanka. There’s a life lesson in this somewhere: Devotion in all its forms gets you … a free egg on your jianbing.

Shandong Big Jianbing 山东大煎饼

If you’re one of those purists who likes to take sides, then you owe it to yourself to try out the Shandong version of the breakfast classic.

We sent our street-snack scout, Kathryn, who deems herself a big fan of crunchy food, to track down an industrious and well-known husband-wife vendor at Madian Xilu in Haidian. When Kathryn eats most jianbing in Beijing, she feels she’s racing against time to devour the thing before all the crispy parts go limp.

Arguably more fun than the crispity-crunch of the Shandong-style jianbing is watching it being made. It’s a collaborative effort: He spins the massive griddle and pours the batter, raking it thin as it cooks. At just the right moment, it’s her job to pluck it from the griddle and lay it out, wax paper-like, on the counter. From there, she swipes on the sauces, sprinkles with scallion and cilantro, layers the lettuce and baocui and folds, folds, folds.

So how does it taste? A bit like eating crackers with sauce. Maybe because less moisture is preserved in this version, it does seem to get cold quite quickly. So you’re still racing against time, just for different reasons. Oh time, how you make fools of us all.

Harbin Kao Lengmian 哈尔兵烤冷面

Observant snackers will have noticed these kao lengmian carts popping up at subway stops and other heavily-peopled locales. They claim to hail from Heilongjiang and their cooking setup looks a whole lot like those of jianbing carts.

However, instead of creating paper-thin crepes on the circular griddle, they plop down rectangles of uncooked pasta. As with the jianbing, an egg is cracked and lightly scrambled on the surface. Unlike the jianbing, these can be topped with red onions and a sweet garlic paste; cumin is another typical seasoning. Instead of being folded, the resulting egg-crepe is rolled into a tube, then cut cross-wise like a sushi roll before the pieces are unceremoniously scooped into a plastic bowl and served with giant toothpicks. The noodle is quite toothsome and the onions pack a kick, but under the right conditions the halitosis would be totally worth it.

This article originally appeared on page 28 in the February issue of the Beijinger.

Photos: Joey Guo