1. Roujiamo

Probably the easiest Chinese dish name for foreigners to remember thanks to a certain James Bond actor, this is also quintessential Xian. The “Chinese hamburger” is one of the world’s oldest sandwiches with a history dating back to the Tang dynasty.

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Shredded pork fills the two most common versions, Guanzhong and Tongguan styles. In the Muslim Quarter, the halal version fills the flat bread usually with beef but occasionally lamb.

Try to find a restaurant such as Wangkui that makes the bread the traditional way with a charcoal-fuelled oven. You will really notice the difference. And if in a group, do as the locals do, order a plate of meat and bread separately and make your own.

2. Cold noodles

Liangpi are slightly more adventurous and make a good accompaniment to barbecue or lamb paomo – a popular soup dish into which diners crumble mo bread. Cold noodles usually come with a spicy sesame sauce (majiang) and julienned cucumber. Similar to Japanese style udon, the wheat flour noodles are springy with a chewy texture. Although served all year around they are especially good in Shaanxi’s hot summers.

3. High oven bread

High oven bread (gaolu shaobing) takes its name from the tall cooking oven used and is a wider but lighter bread than mo encrusted with sesame seeds. Again it creates a pocket to be stuffed with ingredients such as an egg cooked in “old soup”. This name comes from a continually heated and never changed base soup – ingredients are removed though. Reputedly, the best ones have cooked for decades. Diners add from a selection of cold ingredients to fill the remaining space – typical items include pickles, sliced carrots and seaweed.

4. Street food

Beiyuanmen is the main tourist drag of the Muslim Quarter, but there are too many tourists there these days and it is becoming less authentic. The surrounding streets are still good for hunting out snacks.

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Look out for persimmon doughnuts made from mashed fruit mixed into dough and filled with ingredients such as nuts, sesame seeds and bean paste before being deep fried. Also sweet, honey rice cake with dates is probably one of the few cakes you’ll ever eat on a stick.

Soup dumplings are sold by restaurants which spill out onto pavement offering thin skinned parcels filled with beef and onions. Flavoured with cinnamon, the best soup dumplings do not use aspic. The soup comes from the condensation caused by steaming. Liangfen, made from green bean starch, is a more unusual dish served from smoking shallow flat bottomed woks. Fried with beansprouts, chillies and spring onions, soup dumplings make for a good snack on the go.

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 5. Barbecue

Some may say barbecue is just street food, but don’t say that to someone from Xian. Those thick chunks of lamb on tree branches along Beiyuanmen may look enticing but they are not real Xian barbecue. For that, you need to hunt down tiny restaurants in the backstreets of the Muslim Quarter. Here, barbecue is a sit down affair while a master controls the cooking of small pieces of meat threaded onto metal skewers. The result is meat that is cooked far more evenly and all the way through yet still retaining moisture. So good are the best restaurants that they can afford to close for the harsh winter months.

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