After spending the morning touring the Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi’an, we were off to lunch. Hantang Era turned out to be my favourite restaurant while we were in Xi’an. The inside had a modern design and was busy with several tables that were packed for lunch.
We started off with a tomato-based vegetable soup. This actually reminded me of the vegetable soup that is available in many set meals at Hong Kong-style cafes in the Vancouver area. 
The stir-fried tofu with veggies and wood ear fungus was slightly spicy and went very well with rice.
These chicken popsicles were very tasty. Too bad there was only enough for one per person! The chicken was lightly battered and then deep fried.
The lemon chicken was very lemon-y and gooey. Jenkins and I liked it quite a bit and the lemon sauce went very well with rice. Grick wasn’t too much of a fan of this one though.
The squid was celery was quite tasty. Similar to the other celery dishes I had in Xi’an, I liked it quite a bit because the celery taste was milder than what I was accustomed to in North America. Notice the super red carrots again in the picture below.
The cold cucumbers were very tasty. The dressing was slightly tangy and I really liked the crunch of the cucumbers.
The cold vermicelli had a light sesame oil dressing and since it was cold, it was actually quite refreshing.
The duck in herbal sauce was not fatty at all. The herbal taste stood out well to the duck and was actually done quite well. However, I did find the duck to be on the dry side.
The pork in this next dish was nice and juicy and contrasted nicely with the crunchy, fresh vegetables. This was another dish that went really well with rice.
Finally, as if we hadn’t eaten enough, we were presented with some pork and mushroom dumplings. I wasn’t too impressed with the dumplings…they were dry and kind of tasteless.
My favourite dishes here were definitely the lemon chicken, pork and veggies, and the cold vermicelli noodles. They were all simply made but still very tasty.
Summary:
Food: 
Service:
Xi’an: Local Restaurant
Xi’an: Islamic Street Food
Xi’an: Horse Street
Posts (RSS)
April 18th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Gigi, thanks for your Xian posts. I’m looking forward to hearing more about the rest of China and your culinary adventures.
Is it me or the food in Xian seems to be based on a lot of stir-fries, like Cantonese cooking. I mean, just looking at the pictures, I wouldn’t be able to tell if you went to a restaurant in Vancouver or Xian. Would the Xian natives call this food Xian food? Perhaps I was expecting something a bit more different than what we can get in the US or Vancouver. Lemon Chicken in China? I thought that was invented for the Western palates, like Sweet-and-Sour pork. Doesn’t matter, I can chow down a plate of lemon chicken any day if it was prepared well with the right amount of breading and a good, not gooey sauce. Food looks very good with rice…getting hungry now..
April 20th, 2008 at 7:26 am
Hi Erick - you know what, that is a good point. I think because we were on a tour, they would always order at least one dish that they deemed to be friendly to a North American/Canadian palate…in this case, it was lemon chicken.
Before I went to Xi’an, I was told that the food in general there would not be as good as in the other larger cities and now that I think about it, I’m not too sure if what we ate was “local food” per se. Although, I was told that their specialties are in vegetables (my mom called it the farm belt), dumplings, and noodles. I personally was not too impressed with the dumplings in Xi’an but the noodles were definitely very tasty!
The stuff we ate at the Xi’an Islamic Market was special to that area though.