Street Kitchen Road

Guiyang is famous for its spicy food. People here eat everything spicy or really hot. There's hardly anything not spicy. If you don't like spicy food or your stomach doesn't support it, you better ask before you order something and make sure the waiters and chefs understand that you don't want any spice at all. Sometimes, there will be some spice in it, like the odd red pepper or some spicy herbs. 

The reason for eating spicy food is the same like in many other countries and places: low or non existent hygiene standards. Spice kills all the germs and keeps you healthy. But it can be too much for the sensitive westerners who eat a bit of pepper and turn red and ask for water. Some locals (I have witnessed it) like to make fun of it and tell the Laowai that the food is not hot. One bite and the poor Laowai turns red like a lobster. What a way to compete with the lobster in front of you!

Guiyangers love fish and sea food. Most dishes have to do something with either of the two. You'll be very limited if you don't like fish, sea food and spicy food. There's hardly anything else to eat. 

In a (for Chinese standards) small city like GY (5 million inhabitants), western cuisine and western products are very rare and very expensive. Your taste buds better make do and adapt quickly to the local cuisine, otherwise you'll end up paying KFC, McD and Nando's many visits. There's hardly bread, cheese, salami, etc. What looks like bread is not real bread. It is disgustingly sweet. A limited selection of cheese and salami can be found in supermarkets like Carrefour and Walmart, but be prepared to pay a fortune. The same applies for butter and anything western. A pizza in a restaurant starts at roughly 60 yuan and goes up to twice as much. Depending on the place, it can be delicious or disgusting. There are two places in GY where you can enjoy tasty Italian cuisine: Simone's FoodArt (he's Italian and imports many products), and Babbo's (owned by two Chinese who learnt the art of Italian cuisine in Shanghai and I think in Italy). All other pizza places are not worth their money. 

A visit at a 'western' restaurant will easily cost you 100 yuan per person. That's eleven pounds. Doesn't sound much? A bowl of noodles costs as little as seven yuan. A meal at a Chinese restaurant costs hardly over 20 yuan per person. A coffee at Starbucks however, starts at 30 or 32 yuan, that's more than a meal.

If you are into local cuisine or go out with your Chinese friends or meet any locals who want to invite you to dinner, you might end up in one of the numerous street kitchens. They open around 6pm in winter and after 8 or 9 pm in summer and close sometime in the early hours. There's a street in the centre of GY, very close to the Grand Theatre, which is famous for fish and sea food. It's not a proper street kitchen street, because there are many restaurants that have their tents on the pavement. It's well visited and there's no menu in English. Take your local friends with you, or choose a place with a picture menu. The name of the street is Qingyun Lu.

Here are some images of that street

That's what I had. There's fish underneath the vegetables. One is spicy, and one isn't.

 That's where and how it's done.

If you would like to read more by me, here are my novel and my diary from Ar'ar, in the northern Saudi desert. Both available on Amazon as soft and hard copy.