There is a very special place in my heart for the late night snack. There’s the classic 24-hour diner, the hot slice of New York pizza on a cool autumn night, the bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch—if I’ve had a long night out on the town, I could usually go for something between dinner and bedtime.

China opened up a whole new world of late night snacks to me.  Street corners throughout the cities come alive at night with makeshift grills for lamb skewers, garlic smothered eggplant, leeks, mushrooms, chicken wings, sweet potato slices and a whole tray full of different items to sample.  These places stay open seriously late, and are usually packed with boisterous, happy customers.

Usually you can find the street food stand by the scent of fatty lamb chunks sizzling over the grill.   Depending on your level of Chinese fluency, you can order your meats and vegetables by name, or simply point, as the day’s selection is always laid out in neat rows.  Unlike in America, the default for everything is QUITE SPICY.  As much as I try to work on it (and as much as I get made fun of), I have a fairly weak tolerance for hot spices, so I make sure to order mine 不太辣.

Next, take a seat on one of the low plastic stools around a small folding table. If a friend brings over a few large bottles of Tsingtao beer, they’re shared amongst the group into tiny cups made out of a curiously weak plastic.  Friends (and new friends at the neighboring tables) may shout the Chinese phrase for “cheers!” which is literally “dry glass!”  Conveniently, these cups are so very small, that emptying the glass in one gulp is not a problem.  At first.

Your food will show up to your table piece by piece, right when it’s piping hot.  Eat, share, order more and enjoy the high protein and high fat content. With each skewer only ten or twenty cents, it’s easy (and customary) for one person to cover the whole bill and let someone else treat next time.  Nothing can quite match that familiar easygoing atmosphere, homey service, and skewer after skewer of savory meats and veggies.  I imagine this type of experience extends to many who have traveled anywhere in the region.

But alas, with China six thousand some miles away, for now I’ll have to settle for cereal and milk.

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 3:25 pm and is filed under Asia, Community Interest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.