Updated on April 12——————
The tone of the previous answer was a bit intense, which may make some people uncomfortable. I apologize for my wording.
However, the original answer will not be modified in order to maintain the original tone. In addition, this article is no longer just talking about
Beijing
snack but talk about
Beijing
The entire dining environment. Friends who want to watch the snack discussion can log out.
After reading some other answers, first I want to refute an opinion:
I think food is personal taste and cannot be discussed:
This is not true, because the deliciousness/unpalatableness mentioned here is not judged or compared based on personal taste. Because taste is a personal thing, everyone’s favorite food may be different. But what I want to discuss today is not personal taste, but the perception that some people have reached a consensus——
Beijing
Why do snacks/restaurants taste so bad? Of course, some people will say that this is not a consensus, but just my personal opinion, so I will simply post a few pictures.
The above is my Sina Weibo on PC according to:
Beijing
The results can be seen from the number of Weibo searches for the four keywords of “bad,” Shanghai, “Guangzhou,” and “Taiwan” (of course, the Weibo bases in Guangzhou and Taiwan are already small, so they are not particularly convincing).
Beijing
The number of disgusting Weibo posts actually exceeds 100,000+. This can be regarded as a consensus. If you feel that this fuzzy search doesn’t mean anything at all, you can try a more precise one.”
Beijing
Searching for “snacks are not delicious”, “Shanghai snacks are not delicious” and “Guangzhou snacks are not delicious”, the results are similar.
In addition, I will post some Weibo screenshots of popular bloggers complaining, so I think,
Beijing
Unpalatable snacks/food is actually not a matter of personal taste, but a consensus.
Since it is a consensus, there must be room and benchmarks for discussion. How to discuss it is another matter.
Let me explain why I think Beijing snacks are not delicious:
- Are the snacks in Beijing delicious?
Answer: Not delicious. Braised pork, bean juice, and stir-fried liver are not delicious. Roast duck, noodles with soybean paste, and shabu-shabu are ok, but the latter three are not considered snacks.
Beijing
Food bar. Although every place has its own unique taste, there must be a standard for what can be called good taste. Just like painting or listening to music, some songs are good songs as soon as you listen to them, and some paintings are shocking as soon as you look at them. I think the most critical criterion for judging whether a place’s snacks are delicious or not is,
Can it be accepted by people elsewhere?
,
In other words, can he drive to other cities?
The most typical ones include pancakes and fruit, cross-bridge rice noodles, Shaxian snacks, spicy hotpot, fried noodles, etc. These can be eaten anywhere and are more in line with public tastes. But you’re out
Beijing
, can you find braised stir-fried liver and bean juice elsewhere? cannot.
Another point is that when I went home during the Chinese New Year, I walked around for a long time and didn’t know where to start.
Beijing
The pastry family in Daoxiang Village didn’t like what they brought back. Apart from bringing back two sausages, there didn’t seem to be anything else worth bringing back.
- Why is the food in Beijing not delicious?
Not just snacks, a lot
Beijing
None of the restaurants here are delicious. There are several reasons:
①Ingredients are scarce and not fresh
It’s the harvest season in the north, and ingredients are scarce. Even though some ingredients are shipped by air, they are still not fresh. For example, there are two markets in Nancheng: Shiliuzhuang and Great Ocean Road. I have been to the Great Ocean Road and there are many markets.
Beijing
Many restaurants pick up their orders from there because it is cheap, but looking around the entire market, there is no fresh salmon, all of which are frozen. You can know this by asking the manufacturers there.
②Excessive attachment to tradition
Many of the comments below tell me stories and feelings. Do you know that you work so hard to show off your taste buds? It is said that palace snacks are delicious, but the rapid development of the catering business in recent decades and the emergence of many new cooking methods and ingredients have changed the entire catering industry. What the Empress Dowager Cixi eats may not necessarily be what you eat. many. So the traditional ones are delicious? Besides, people’s taste buds are constantly evolving. If you watched it as a child five years ago, you thought it was pretty good. Now, wouldn’t it feel a little silly if you watch it now? It is recommended that everyone watch the Netflix documentary “Unfavorable Food”. Station B has resources. The first episode discussed whether the pizza in New York, which is not authentic but delicious at all, can be considered serious pizza. They returned to Italy to find the origin of pizza and visited the Italian Pizza Association. Adhering to tradition is actually a stagnation of gastronomic innovation to a certain extent.
③The taste is relatively simple and heavy in oil and salt.
In fact, this is not only
Beijing
, the whole northern city has this problem. It is the harvest season, so there is not much to eat in winter. Some of the ingredients are a bit rotten and we can only rely on oil and salt to cover up the taste. Therefore, northern cuisine basically has the tradition of heavy oil and salt.
In addition, it is more conservative and has a single taste, especially for older people. I remember the first time I made Tom Yum soup at home. I cooked prawns for my mother and added coconut milk. My mother took a bite and said, I still love home-cooked food. As a northerner with good roots, she refuses this kind of food from Southeast Asia, but looking at the whole world, isn’t Tom Yum Goong a delicacy?
- Why is Beijing a food desert?
This is relative, after all
Beijing
There is definitely no comparison with Shanxi, but for China or world-class cities, this is indeed the case~ I found some data:
①Catering industry revenue in Beijing and Shanghai
(2016
Beijing
Catering industry revenue Source:
Beijing
Municipal Statistics Bureau)
(Source of Shanghai catering industry revenue in 2016: Shanghai Statistical Yearbook: ?d1=)
The part circled in red is the total revenue of the catering industry in the two cities. The difference is about 8 billion, so overall
Beijing
The catering industry in Shanghai is indeed not as developed as Shanghai.
②Distribution of urban catering types
(Distribution map of Beijing’s catering industry in 2016)
(2016 Shanghai catering industry distribution map)
By comparison, although the largest proportion of snacks in both cities is fast food, the number in Shanghai is obviously greater, which means that there are more choices besides eating out when commuting to get off work. In addition, among the top 10 types of dishes in the two cities,
Beijing
The hot pot and barbecue home-cooked dishes are the bulk, while the Western food and Japanese food are small portions, and the Japanese food is in
Beijing
Not even in the top 10. Hot pot and barbecue are two dining options with very low technical barriers. Especially hot pot, the bottom of the pot can be made and transported by the manufacturer. The only difference is in the ingredients, and spicy pot has a particularly good ability to cover up the defects of the ingredients. So basically there is no bad hot pot, and the same goes for barbecue. The same goes for grilled gluten, hand pancakes, and grilled cold noodles.
Among the top 10 in Shanghai, in addition to snacks, fast food, bread and desserts, local cuisine, Japanese food, Western food, and Cantonese food are all more time-consuming, and the ingredients are not fresh or the technology is not good enough to be easily tasted, which means that the quality of the food is required. It is very high, and the requirements for practitioners are also very high.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to call this a dining environment dominated by such low-barrier cuisines but lacking serious requirements for ingredients and methods. The top 50 restaurants in Asia, never favored
Beijing
, this is also true.
Just sauce, welcome to discuss.
——————————
Some people downstairs object that I am not objective, so let me add this: Looking at all of China and the world, among all the top cities (London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai),
Beijing
It’s a food desert! ! ! ! My answer was a bit off topic and mainly discussed the entire
Beijing
The food construction environment has little to do with whether the snacks are delicious or not.
Some people say I belittle
Beijing
People don’t know how to eat. Of course, this is relative.
Beijing
People are definitely better at eating than us Shanxi people, after all, it is a first-tier city, but they are not necessarily better at eating than people in Shanghai and Hong Kong.
Beijing
There are ordinary chefs who make 8,000 yuan a month, and there are also people who make about 5,000 yuan a month.
Let’s put it this way, I’m
Beijing
The job is not because he has delicious food, but because he has film festivals and non-stop exhibitions, because the food aspect is unattractive, and he is the kind of person who doesn’t know what to bring back home during the New Year. In fact, there is another aspect that can be looked at, that is
Beijing
snack or
Beijing
Considering the popularity of the dish in other cities, snail rice noodles have become popular all over the country in recent years. Guilin rice noodles, Guoqiao rice noodles, Shandong pancakes, and Taiwanese milk tea can be eaten in basically every city. But you can remove
Beijing
Can you find stir-fried liver braised in bean paste elsewhere? Basically none, except
Beijing
Roast duck (of course roast duck is not a snack). but
Beijing
Among the dishes, I especially like one dish, called Qianlong cabbage, but it should be considered a Beijing dish and not a snack~
Someone else said below
Beijing
There is good western food,
Beijing
With so many high-ranking officials, of course there are particularly high-end restaurants. I didn’t say there weren’t any. Note that I said that in all the top cities in the world,
Beijing
It’s a food desert! Also said
Beijing
The salary is the highest among all restaurants. I don’t know where you got the data to support it. If it is not the average salary of one or two top chefs, it is obviously not convincing. The meat buns in London cost about 3 pounds each, and the dough is 5-6 pounds (the price in 2016), which is about the same as normal prices in London.
If you don’t see it clearly, you won’t reply.
For data support, you can check out Shanghai, Shenzhen and
Beijing
It can be seen from the proportion of employees in the service industry that in
Beijing
The smallest number of people are engaged in the service industry.
Another thing, when drinking coco milk tea in Nanjing, the monthly salary of a store manager of a 10 square meter store can reach 7,000-8,000. This is what I have seen with my own eyes.
Beijing
, the manager of a 300-square-meter hotel can earn as much as 5,000-6,000. Without a good salary, there will be no good talents, and without good talents, there will be no good service. So when the waiter often rolls his eyes at you, you should also think about why. .but why
Beijing
What if there is no good salary? Otherwise, the cost of renting a house is too expensive, and other costs of food, transportation and other costs can only be reduced by labor. Another thing is to live in
Beijing
of people are willing to spend a lot of money on delicious food. Only when there are people who can consume can there be restaurants with corresponding consumption. Only when there are demands for more tastes can there be people to supply them. If you are content with eating pancakes, fruit, millet porridge and pickles all your life, how can anyone open up a wider border~ And you and I When it comes to whether it tastes good or not, whether the restaurant has a wide range of restaurants, and whether the service staff are of high quality, you tell me
Beijing
The stories behind the snacks are about feelings, I’m sorry I don’t agree with them.
——————————————
The following is the original answer: Hong Kong Zhen, I think there is a saying that says it very well:
Beijing
It’s a food desert.
This does not mean that there are no high-end restaurants, but it refers to the variety of street food choices. If you go to any southern city, you will find a milk tea shop every five steps and a food stall every ten steps. You will not be hungry at all, and there are so many types. Not every month is the same. Look again
Beijing
, I have lived here for a year, and the roadside stalls only sell grilled cold noodles, hand cakes, grilled gluten, and spicy hotpot. Anyway, they have no characteristics and are not easy to make, but they don’t taste very delicious.
What does this reflect?
- live in
Beijing
People who are not particularly sensitive to eating
- People living in the background have relatively single tastes and are very weak in accepting new foods.
-
Beijing
People don’t want to spend too much money on food, and it can be said that their requirements for life are not that high.
The Beijingers mentioned here do not only refer to locals in Beijing, but also include people living in Beijing. In fact, not only Beijing, but all northern cities have this problem.
Like Shanghai, you can basically eat delicacies from all over the world. Shanghainese like to eat very much and know what tastes good. They have a sense of tolerance for any food and have a petty bourgeois sentiment. When my Shanghai classmate’s mother goes to the UK, she insists on having afternoon tea and buying chocolates. When she returns home, she packs British cookies and drinks coffee every day. If it weren’t for her yellow skin, I would have thought she was in the UK. grown up. As for my classmate, every time I video chat with her at around 9pm, she is either holding a cup of milk tea and drinking it, or in the middle of the chat, my mother comes in and delivers a bowl of white fungus soup.
Look again
Beijing
Some of the restaurants here have very few delicacies from relatively niche countries anyway, and most of them are improved chains, and they are all concentrated in Chaoyang District. Isn’t there a saying that says: Chaoyang District is the entire
Beijing
An oasis in a food desert~
In fact, the most obvious thing is, look
Beijing
Just look at the number of delicious Western and Japanese restaurants. It’s estimated that the entire
Beijing
There are not many restaurants in the city. Either they have Japanese food or Western food, or they mean that the food quality is high. It’s just that
Beijing
Cities of this magnitude look around the world, including Shanghai, Tokyo, London, New York, Paris,
Beijing
The food is the worst regardless of taste, quantity, quality or service.
==========
If you think his answer is good, please give him a like!
Your support is a great encouragement to the author~