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.

Yak in Yunnan

On location in Yunnan, Southwest China.

Mom and I recently had a little vacation in Yunnan Province, Southwest China. It was our first time to the region, and we had such a good time, we're already talking about going back. I'll publish a series of stories about Yunnan's weird meat choices over the next few weeks.



Yucky yak steak.

Yunnan borders Tibet, and there are lots of Tibetan people in the area, so naturally, you can find lots of yak meat and yak butter tea. The first we tried was in Dali's old city -- yak steak at a Tibetan theme guesthouse restaurant. It was sweeter than we expected -- sweeter than beef, and not musky like mutton (we expected it to, but were pleasantly surprised, not being big fans of lamb and mutton). This yak steak was tenderized to a flaccid pulp and we shared the leftovers with many of the cute puppies whimpering about. (What is it with Dali and Lijiang -- everyone seems to have a brand new puppy, and they're the most irresistibly cute doggies we've seen anywhere.) We didn't see any on the menu, so we can't tell you if they are as delicious as they are cute.



Little puppy wants some yak scraps.

Next day, before a gorgeous trip up the mountain overlooking Dali and Erhu lake, we had our first yak butter tea. I'm not sure how authentic this one was, but it was by far our favorite of all the yak butter teas we'd try over the next week. It was frothed up like a creamy cappuccino, with sweet-spicy tea (like Indian chai), and yak milk and butter blended into a expertly balanced flavor. Mmmm. One of the culinary highlights of our trip.



Fancy yuppie yak butter tea with frothy yak milk.

Lijiang is further into yak country, so we had the more authentic stuff here. We started with a fine little meal at the infamously named "Flourishing Sanck" [sic] near the village square, which features such chinglish menu doozies as "Potato The Crap". We ordered the stir-fried yak with celery, which was great, and so much better than that sad excuse for a yak steak in Dali. And we ordered the "small pot" of the yak butter tea. This turned out to be an enormous pot enough for 10 people. Completely different from that sophisticated concoction in Dali, this was the real stuff, with a strong yakky-butter smell, and no creaminess. We still liked it, and didn't find it as off-putting as many tourists complain about, but we admit liking the yuppie one better.



Welcome to Flourishing Sanck!

Exploring the charming cobbled-laned village of Lijiang, we found several shacks selling yak jerkies and various dried yak meats. We tasted a lot of these and found them scrumptious.



The spicy fatty one made a nice snack on top of the Jade Snow Mountain. The area around here -- you can see why they're claiming it as the mythical inspiration for Shangri-La. Naxi-Dongba culture is unique -- claims to be the world's only surviving matriarchal society, and the only pictographic language -- and there's an incredible range of herbs, edible plants and mushrooms and flowers.



Atop Jade Snow Mountain (YuLong Shan) north of Lijiang, near Tibet.




Mom, did you fart? Or is that the yak butter tea?