Street food

As the sun dawns smogly in the east, a man in a white apron stands behind a circular hotplate waiting for his next customer. I walk up and nod, saying “wo yao”.

“Yi ge?”, he asks. “Yi ge” I reply, and he goes to work.

He pours some batter onto the foot-wide hotplate and immediately scrapes it wafer thin to the edge. Cracking a raw egg in the middle and spreading that too, he grabs pinches of chopped shallots, cooked chinese cabbage and chilli and scatters them across. A healthy squirt of barbeque sauce follows, then the lot is topped with a square of pre-cooked waffle. He folds the whole several times and then chops it in half, slips it into a plastic bag and hands it to me in exchange for Y2.80 (A$0.60).

Crispy, spicy, filling and so tasty it’s probably addictive, so went my first ever meal in China.