Ba zi rou

[DylanK]

A Xuzhou (徐州) specialty.

Look at that. Pork. The fat is like ice cream. Really. It genuinely melts in your mouth. You chopstick up a piece, bite it, and then get a mouthful of still steaming rice. It melts. Your mouth is full of melted pork. The meat is chewy, stringy, salty, perfect.

So, basically, ba zi rou (把子肉) is the slice of pork belly and also the dish, the whole idea. You've got a pot, a big pot. Inside: soup, pork belly slices, meat balls, ribs, every bean curd product imaginable, sausage, bok choy.

It's a cauldron of pork fat and everything delicious in the world.

My favorite place in the city. The lineup goes out the door from 11:30, when it opens, to about 1:30 or whenever they run out of meat.

(I always said that one day I'd demand my ba zi rou inside a porcelain rooster, like the picture above the serving window).

They've got special pots with platforms for the bowls, so that they can sit over the big cauldrons. You call out what you want, it goes in the bowl, and they pour soup over it. You get a bowl of rice beside it, an empty bowl to put rice broth in (water from the boiling of the rice), and a few cloves of raw garlic.

Feng Qi is one of the more famous places. It has a few branches around Xuzhou.

There's Min Zhu Lu Ba Zi Rou. And San Lei Ba Zi Rou. Those are the big ones, the best ones. All the big ones, the famous ones have branches around the city, franchises. But it's unavailable, as far as I know, outside of Xuzhou.

Each place has their own special additions. Every place has a different meat ball. Every place has a different sausage. Min Zhu Lu Ba Zi Rou has massive, bronze chicken legs that stew in that pork fat soup all morning. Amazing. Feng Qi has pork ribs and ginger-y, spicy ground pork balls.

That bowl above is from a generic xiao qu (小区) restaurant, just a little joint in an apartment complex. They have a big metal bowl going all day on an induction burner and it's available from mid-morning to closing time. It's not as good as the big places, but it ain't bad.

My order was always the same, three slices of pork fat, and whatever I was in the mood for. But always three slices of pork.

Feng Qi was my favorite but I ate at Min Zu Lu a lot because it was on the way to my bus stop (I often ate their twice a day, first the la tang and then the ba zi rou for lunch). But the tiny places are decent too, and often have unexpected variations (there's a place across the street from a Min Zhu Lu Ba Zi Rou branch that has spicy, red, thumb-sized chunks of barbecued pork).

So... ba zi rou...

Ever had it?

And why have I now chosen to live in a place where ba zi rou is not widely available?

[Kent Wang]

Beautiful! I believe the Chinese are the masters of the pork belly. I can think of nearly a dozen Chinese preparations for pork belly, all excellent.

Is ba zi rou the most quintessential Suzhou specialty, like xiao long bao for Shanghai and Peking duck for Beijing?

[DylanK]

Xuzhou, not Suzhou. 徐州 not 苏州.

When I was first moving from Nanjing to Xuzhou, I told people and they'd always say, "Oh, Suzhou, beautiful gardens, great city." Then I had to tell them, "No, no, Xuzhou!" And then it would be, "Oh... why would you want to go there? Have you ever heard of Suzhou? Much nicer, beautiful gardens."

I guess the quint. Xuzhou specialty would be... sha tang. It's the one that people know outside of the city. The meaning is like... "what soup." (Google Pinyin doesn't have the right character for that "sha.") This dude named Pengzu invented it. It was pheasant and black pepper, basically. And some Emperor came and asked, "What soup is this?" And they said, "Erm... it's 'what soup.'" It's full of black pepper and now it's got chicken and eel instead of pheasant. It's good.

[DylanK]

This will be the official thread for 徐州 specialties.

From 马市街 饣它 汤 (join those two characters in front of 汤):

Pengzu invented it. The dude lived to be, like, 700 years old. I think he invented 把子肉, too.

马市街饣它 汤 is an amazing place. They've got a cauldron as tall as the man that dips his massive spoon into it. I've been there at 5:00, when they take out the massive pork bones, like a dozen hogs' worth of bones.

It's thick from pork fat and green beans. It's got chicken, eel. It's good.

马市街饣它 汤 is tiny and they're full from opening, at 6:00, to whenever they run out of soup, around 11:30 (if you go at 11:30, you can get a bowl of superconcentrated sha tang, almost porridge, full of green beans and eel spines). The main clientele is old men with their own little pots.

You go to the front counter and buy tickets, one for soup, one for dipping items (dumplings, 油条), and grab an egg. You get a bowl, break the egg in, then bring it to the massive cauldron, get your bowl filled.

Eating these dumplings ruined me for Shanghai, where I wasn't prepared for 小龙包, which tasted like they were composed of Sprite and ground pork, ultrasweet. You bite the top off of one of these 包子, then drop it in the soup to fill with sha tang, then bring it back out to eat.

Edited August 28, 2007 by DylanK (log)

[DylanK]

Also--and superior to 饣它 汤--辣汤 (la tang, spicy soup). But not... spicy. Well, spicy, but not, like, spicy. It's oldschool spicy, from the days before China had chilis, when things were spicy from black pepper and ginger. This is spicy, spicy soup, full of ginger and black pepper.

It's the same deal as sha tang, roughly: thick soup made from pork and chicken bones and eel and such, but minus the green beans and with egg added right from the start (so, it's sort of tough and rubbery, but in a really good way). Sha tang is a nice beige color, la tang is dark grey.

It's sort of like var. other black pepper soups I tried in Henan (I think it's Luoyang that's famous for a soup that's v. similar but thinner and with 粉丝 [fen si, bean vermicelli]) and Shandong... but not exactly the same, never as thick and full of meat.

Some weeks I'd get a daily bowl at 民主路把子肉, which sells la tang and porridge and dumplings in the morning. By the time I'd get there, during my 9:30 break, the soup would be the perfect consistency. The 阿姨 were usually already at work tying up bundles of tofu and vegetables for the 把子肉, so I'd get to ladle my own soup. I always made sure I got a few chicken hearts and livers and lots of eel.

[LuckysticksPRC]

If you ever go down to Guangxi (and particularly Nanning, though other cities will have it too), try some kou rou (扣肉)。 Another amazing manifestation of pork belly, served vertically in alternating slices of pork-taro-pork-taro, all on top of some kind of chopped greens that soak up the fatty drippings. Not completely unlike Southern-style collard greens.

That's the big dinner presentation at least. I've also seen it slow-cooked in a big kettle, and then ladled out over glutinous rice (糯米饭) that's been cooked with some sausage. It's something like 2 yuan per slice, add an extra yuan if you want one of the pieces of sausage (and you will). Of course they usually take a big ladle full of the meat stock and pour it over the rice, which makes the whole thing perfect.

Is the sha tang character you were talking about this: 啥?

[LuckysticksPRC]

Eating these dumplings ruined me for Shanghai, where I wasn't prepared for 小龙包, which tasted like they were composed of Sprite and ground pork, ultrasweet. You bite the top off of one of these 包子, then drop it in the soup to fill with sha tang, then bring it back out to eat.

←

Those look incredible. Someday I'm going to post pictures of the sorry bao zi we have here in Guilin. Do they have sheng jian man tou in Xuzhou? They look a little similar to what's in this photo.

[DylanK]

Not 啥. Check the sha tang Wikipedia page for an explanation of the character. Kind of interesting.

The fried dumplings are pretty generic fried dumplings, dude. Better than any famous joints' fried dumplings I ate in Shanghai, I promise, but pretty generic.