Raw Yak in Chengdu

Chengdu, Sichuan, China



Me and B6 were in Chengdu for a few days as part of our China national tour [B6 Post Haze]. Chengdu is the heartland of Sichuan province in China, which makes some of my most favorite food in the world. The signature flavor is "ma la", which means "numb spicy". They use the hua-jiao (Sichuan peppercorns), which I wrote about before, because they used to be illegal in the USA.

Anyway, there's tons of great food to eat here, but we were on a mission to find something we'd never had before, something weird. Since Chengdu is the main gateway to Tibet, we hunted down a Tibetan restaurant near Jinli street.



We ordered some yak milk tea (milder than this version). Warms you up. Why do they always serve it in those enormous jugs enough for 10 people? Then we ordered a bottle of barley wine with honey. This was excellent! I've got to get more of this. It's not like a European barley wine. This Tibetan barley wine was un-carbonated. It had 11% alcohol, and a subtle sweetness from honey. I could drink this often. It's far better than any liquor I've had from China.

Then we ordered raw yak meat. For breakfast. It was served half frozen, and could have been passed off as beef carpaccio. The flavor, perhaps, was lighter than most raw beef I've had. And guess what? The dipping sauce was wasabi and soy sauce. Who cares about authenticity when it's delicious. It was.

More Yak yumminess here.