Why Dalian menzi didn’t make it onto A Bite of China III

So, what exactly does authentic Dalian menzi taste like?

Different strokes for different folks may just be the most apposite answer to the question.

Before the Spring Festival, Tie Dan and his wife Xiaoying, both Dalian natives, made a video to introduce Dalian menzi to China and the world. In the video they tasted menzi from three shops recommended by netizens and scored them on three aspects: elasticity, crunchiness of the crust, and quality of the sesame dressing.

Both of them gave up on the shop at Olympic Plaza for excessive sesame paste and brininess. As per feedback from netizens, the owner of the shop is not a Dalian local, though this is indeed the fount of the Dalian menzi’s fame. Much has changed for the shop, from being a small stall a few years ago to the stationary shop it is now: the Blends of Two and Luxury Sets exhibit a decent combination of street foods; more seasonings including chili sauce and sesame oil are now available for the enrichment of flavors. The Dalian natives, however, knowing the flavors of their childhood by heart, were not too enthusiastic about it. “Not authentic” was the consensus of many Dalian locals in the store, who shook their shook their heads at its popularity. This contrasted starkly with the opinions of tourists who often remarked that “it’s pretty good”.

Located behind Roosevelt Plaza is a menzi shop that Xiaoying frequented when she was a child. It offers the taste of the salad days that she misses the most. It even affords the small iron fork that she still obsesses her. In these sentiments, she drained the soup in the bowl and gave her highest score – a perfect score of 30 points. Tie Dan, however, had reservations about it, with the venial regret that “not all of the menzi were blessed with a crunchy crust”. In truth, menzi was not this shop’s cash cow in the first place; various skewers were. Credits are to be given to the preservation of homemade flavors, though, as the time-honored technique of powdering is in no way elementary. Apart from the painstaking quest for high-quality sweet potato powder and the immoderate space it occupies, the manual production process is more complex than that for skewers. It is simply “not worth it”.

The last stop for Tie Dan and Xiaoying was Laoda’s menzi at Erqi Plaza, to which Tie Dan gave a perfect score, acclaiming that it was "crunchy", "sufficiently garlicky", and "markedly al dente". The storeowner told me that he adored eating menzi as a child but was never satiated and had little money. To quench his cravings, he contrived to help elderly women make menzi by volunteering to stir the paste, as the making of the snack entails attentive stirring while it simmers over the fire after the paste is properly made, and the greater the strength and the number of times it is stirred to better the taste. In retrospect, Laoda’s metier owes much to the experience that precipitated him into polishing the craft from his early years. Scolding and cuffing was almost quotidian, for he had to skip school classes and was often late returning home after carrying out his surreptitious scheme. But it was all well worth it as the hunger was assuaged by the work of his own hands. Notably, this knack only came in handy some 20 years ago, when he was transferred from military to civilian work in Dalian. Incorporating the skills that he learnt making Xi’an liangpi (steamed noodles) while serving, and after years operating  his small stall, he finally mustered the gall to take a mortgage and buy a house. More varieties of foods have been added to the shop as customers are rarely satisfied after one bowl of menzi, but the majority still go there specifically for menzi.

A tourist tries Dalian menzi [Photo/dlxww.com]