- We're heading towards Irving Street,
which is sort of the main commercial drag
in the inner Sunset neighborhood,
south of Golden Gate Park.
And we're going to a pop-up, Tai Chi Jianbing,
inside of a restaurant called Nabe.
What Tai Chi Jianbing specializes in is jianbing.
Jianbing has an exciting origin story.
Apparently, there's this General,
during the Three Kingdoms Era, General Liang.
He and his men were marching.
They ran out of woks, and they're like,
"(bleep), how are we gonna cook?"
General Liang had a brilliant idea.
Heat up the shields, pour the batter on the shields.
Then put (bleep) in it and make a little pancake.
This very brilliant military tactician
was also the culinary father
of many delicious Chinese foods.
Explain a little bit about the history, about the pop-up,
and sort of the origin of Nabe.
- We just started the late of 2005.
And our first pop-up at Osaka Imai.
So the owner of the Nabe is really great.
He gave us a lot of support.
- Why do you focus on jianbing?
- 'Cause I eat jianbing a lot when I was young.
We got these recipes from a master
who's doing this in Beijing for decades.
The first time, if you want to try our jianbing,
I highly recommend original one.
So that's the most authentic taste.
- Let's eat some jianbing.
Okay, so I'm definitely...
This original, the (speaks Mandarin).
And then I think also, the (speaks Mandarin),
which is the barbecued pulled pork.
And then, you said you have a cumin beef special?
- Yeah, cumin beef.
- So let's try that, too.
And I think three is enough.
This is sort of the quintessential
northern China street food.
The best way to describe this.
It is like a Chinese crepe.
Crack a couple of eggs on it,
and then you just put all kinds of (bleep),
whatever you want.
There are different sauces.
Sometimes it's like a hoisin sauce.
Oyster sauce, which is like corn starch
with a little bit of oyster essence.
Why don't we get going with the
old street original jianbing,
(speaks Mandarin) jianbing.
This is prepared with some chili paste, some fermented tofu.
There's usually the (speaks Mandarin),
which is like a crispy cracker.
(hums)
I love this, man.
This takes me back.
Little bit of a,
little story.
I was a very poor student in college.
I think my report card spelled "fad-d-d".
And I got kicked out of school, essentially.
I ended up going to China for a year.
This was when I was like, 19.
I rented a room at a college
and I would walk to work every day
where I worked at the Holiday Inn.
And for breakfast, when I ate on the streets,
they had the jianbing guys...
I forget how much it cost,
but it was probably a dollar, $1.50, I think.
This was almost 20 years ago.
I'm a very old man.
This is a little fancier.
This is sort of fancified.
(snaps fingers) jianbing.
But it's still, the essence of it is the same.
There's a good amount of spice in this,
and there's also sort of like that sweet, heady,
bean paste flavor that kind of pervades,
is that it's sort of spread all over.
And then of course, the crunchy texture of that
fried wonton strip, the (speaks Mandarin).
And so that also gives a nice crunch,
a nice texture, a nice variant.
But yeah, super good.
Let's try another flavor of this.
Let's try the...
This is (speaks Mandarin) jianbing,
which is the barbecued pork.
It looks like there's just kind of like...
For lack of a better term,
this is like barbecued pulled pork.
There's a big fistful of
nice, bright purple cabbage in there.
This tastes like a traditional pulled pork
like you would get in sort of a
North Carolina style barbecue.
It's that...
In Chinese, it's rousong.
It's like meat floss, is the best way.
Redneck spaghetti, also.
Well, I don't wanna offend the rednecks out there.
Sorry.
It does taste a little Chinese,
because there still is that sweet bean texture.
But there also is, what tastes to me, at least,
like a ketchup, vinegar, Worcestershire,
tomato-based sauce that's mixed in with
the Chinese flavors that you would expect,
which is sort of more fermented bean,
soy bean, mung bean,
fermented tofu, fermented vegetables.
But it's still very good.
This is their special.
This is the cumin beef.
And I gotta say, this looks good.
And it looks like there's red peppers
and a lot of cilantro,
as well as this beef in there.
This is great.
Cumin is a spice sometimes associated with
Indian cuisine in south Asia.
It has a presence in a lot of curries,
and so it is a very fragrant, very powerful,
very heady spice.
It pairs well with meat.
Cumin can overpower easily, but it doesn't do that here.
It serves the jianbing well.
There's also a nice, sharp ginger flavor in this as well.
So this one has a lot of strong flavors.
The cumin, the peppers, the ginger,
the big strips of onion, as you can see here.
This one is a little more, like, down-to-business.
I'd like to thank you for joining me
for this episode of Dining on a Dime
from the Tai Chi Jianbing pop-up inside Nabe restaurant
in San Francisco, California.
If you'd like to watch more, please click here.