Breakfast of Champions

It's rather difficult to explain to someone what exactly Chinese breakfast is.

"Instead of milk, you drink soy milk and you can have it salty or sweet."
"Salty or sweet?"
"Then there's these things called Oil Sticks that you dip into your soy milk."
"Oil Sticks?"
"Yeah, they're like doughnuts. And sometimes you put the Oil Sticks inside a flat bread thing covered in sesame and eat it together."
"So you put a doughnut between bread? Bread in bread?"
"Well....yeah."

It's something you have to experience to truly understand how good Chinese breakfast is. Technically, it's Taiwanese, but it's all Chinese right? :-)

I haven't had much exposure to true authentic Chinese breakfast. I've never been to Taiwan where vendors make the foods fresh on the streets and now my parents only go as far as Ranch 99 in Artesia to get breakfast. I considered the Ranch 99's quality to be decent, but apparently, I was wrong.

In order to show me Chinese breakfast of acceptable quality, Doris took me to a place in San Gabriel, about 25 miles from Cerritos, called Yong He. It was almost noon by the time we got there and we still had to wait around for 25 minutes before we got seated. In typical fashion, I was famished and thus cranky, which was made worse by the poor service that is standard of a Chinese restaurant. But once the food came, all offenses were forgotten.

Since we normally don't get Chinese breakfast all that often, we decided to order a lot of food to share, figuring we could take the leftovers home. We order a sweet Do Jiang, a Shao Bing Yo Tiao, a Dan Bing, a Fan Tuan and a Luo Bo Si Bing (descriptions to follow). We finished it ALL between the two of us. No leftovers to take home because it was all in our bellies. I had so much that seven hours later at dinner, I still wasn't hungry yet. What made it even better was all that food only came out to $8.47!! Dirt cheap!

[Do Jiang] Literal translation: bean juice. Also known as soy milk. It can be served hot or cold, salty or sweet. The sweet just has sugar added while the salty has vinegar, which curdles the milk, then soy sauce, dried shredded pork, green onions and pieces of Yo Tiao are added. I personally like the sweet; I'm not a big fan of the salty.

[Shao Bing] Literally: Roasted Flat Bread. It's a flat bread that's served toasted and crunchy on the sesame-covered oustide with a soft, flaky interior. It's normally split open and filled with meat, egg, Yo Tiao and other yummies. This place is known for their Shao Bing and rightly so. I think it was the best I've ever had.

[Yo Tiao] Literally: Oil Stick. It's a long piece of fried dough that's crunchy yet still slightly soft on the inside. It's great when dipped into the Do Jiang. We had ours inside our Shao Bing.

[Dan Bing] Literally: Egg Pancake. That's basically what it is: eggs cooked with scallions on top of a thin chewy flour pancake. It's folded up and cut into a few pieces.

[Fan Tuan] Literally: Rice Roll Up. Made with sweet, sticky rice, it's a rice roll, with the inside stuffed with a Yo Tiao, dried shredded pork and pickled vegetables. It's a great on-the-go food.

[Luo Bo Si Bing] Literally: Shredded Turnip Bun. It's a flaky pastry filled with salty shredded daikon. Yum.

There's a bunch of other Chinese breakfast foods that I haven't mentioned, but I'll save those for another day (after another trip to San Gabriel!!). While I want to know how good it is in Taiwan, I almost don't, because then nothing in the States will ever compare. Doris offered to pimp me out to her uncle who knows how to make all these things so I could learn. Maybe that's not such a bad idea. :-)