Jianbing: Beijing's Best Street Breakfast for Under a Dollar

Jianbing (煎饼, jiānbǐng) is the breakfast that keeps Beijing moving. The vendor ladles mung bean and wheat batter onto a hot circular griddle, spreads it thin with a wooden T-scraper, cracks an egg on top and smears that across too. Then comes a brush of sweet bean sauce and chilli, a scatter of spring onion and coriander, a sheet of crispy fried cracker, and the whole thing gets folded into a rectangle, cut in half and handed over in a paper sleeve. Ninety seconds, start to finish.

It costs ¥6-12 ($0.85-1.70), it is hot, savoury, chewy and crunchy at once, and it is far better than anything on your hotel's breakfast buffet. Eat it standing up, immediately — it goes soggy within five minutes.

Finding one is the only real skill. Carts cluster at metro exits and outside office buildings during the morning rush, and vanish completely by mid-morning. The hutong areas around Gulou, Wudaoying and Beixinqiao reliably have a couple, as do the lanes off Wangfujing. Look for a queue of people in work clothes; that is your signal.

A note on hygiene: these carts are informal but high-turnover, and the batter cooks at high heat. Choose one with a visible queue and a vendor handling money separately from food, and you will be fine. If you want a sit-down version, chain shops like Huang Taiji do a cleaner, blander, ¥15-20 ($2-2.80) take on the same thing — worth knowing about, but the cart is the real experience.