Kunming is capital of multi-ethnic Yunnan province, in the south west of China, on the border with Viet Nam, Burma and Laos. As you would imagine it has lots of very interesting food and which has attracted some attention in the West. It’s also supposed to be one of the prettiest cities in China and it was very nice to stroll along the paths beside the river. Sadly though I was only in town for a couple of days and had little time to explore the rest of the city or the province.
I stayed at the monolithic Horizon Hotel Yunan at 432 Qingnian Rd, in the central Panlong district, which was fine. The staff were pretty helpful and they have a fairly large pool.
The famous local dish here is a noodle soup called Guo Qiao Mi Xian or ‘Crossing the Bridge’ Noodles. It differs from any noodle soup I’ve had before by the fact you have to assemble it yourself. First a plate of bean sprouts, spring onion, ribbon tofu and a raw egg arrives, followed by a second plate of small pieces of chicken and several thinly sliced pieces of pork (and other porkish meats I couldnt discern), then a bowl of fat rice noodles and finally a bowl of hot stock. The ingredients should be mixed into the stock in order and topped off with a few dollops of chilli sauce if so desired. Legend has it that the dish was created by a wife who had to carry food a long way (over a bridge) to her husband who was studying for an exam. Mixing the ingredients on the spot kept the dish from getting soggy.
If you turn left out of the hotel and first left, you will find several places serving it (also a good one near Shane school of English next to the river). Unfortunately most places have no picture menu and operate a pay first system where you are issued with a coloured ticket which is then handed in at the serving hatch. My solution was to loiter and watch what people got for their ticket and if I liked the look of it, pointed at the colour ticket I wanted.
Another local delicacy is Qi Guo Ji, a chicken soup stew cooked in a stack of clay pots, similar in principle to an Italian coffee pot. The resulting distilled broth is delicious and the chicken was ok if you could find the chunks without pieces of splintered bone. I had it with local wild mushrooms (also highly renowned) at a wooden fronted restaurant named ‘Yunan Delicacies Food’ on the street behind the hotel, next to the antiques centre. The menu is in Mandarin but you can see pictures of the clay pots on the first page. I had it with rice, some kind of green veg and specially aged Pu-erh tea for 58 RMB.
Goodbye Kunming, shame I only scratched your surface. Please see my post about Beijing for Yunnanese food in the capital.