Restaurant: 王土地莜面村
Address: 海淀区中关村北大街42号 (42 Zhongguancun N Street, Haidian District)
City: Beijing, China
We flew back to Beijing from Xi’an and visited Educational Services Exchange (ESEC). ESEC is known for its Total Immersion Program (TIP), which as the name implies, is a total immersion program for students (mostly from Western China) to improve their English language. Their students are required to use English at all times during the program, and are not allowed to communicate in Chinese (verbally and written). It’s a 21-day program and they’re even thinking of shortening it! Isn’t that crazy?! But it actually works! The program has been in effect since 2005. They’ve got a nice YouTube video, if you’re interested in checking it out!
We met up the founder of the program and had dinner with him, across the street from ESEC. The restaurant’s interior was vibrant and elegant. It was red everywhere, from the walls to lanterns to table markings. The Chinese are infatuated with the color red because it symbolizes joy and good luck.
We had a number of dishes unique to Beijing, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, and Xinjiang. Here are some of the dishes I managed to take shots of.
Steamed Spinach (Beijing)
Potato Salad (Beijing)
Lamb Skewers (Xinjiang)
Wood Ear Mushroom Salad (Shanxi)
The Chinese usually eat their dishes with rice or noodles. However, there is one type of staple food from the Nei Mengu minority from Inner Mongolia called 莜面窝窝 (yóu miàn wō wo), and Shanxi called 莜面栲栲 (yóu miàn kǎo kǎo); both are loosely translated as “honeycomb noodles”. It’s not quite noodle or rice, but it’s made from oat or buckwheat. It has a honeycomb appearance, and is served in a basket alongside a special dipping sauce.
Honeycomb “Noodle” (Inner Mongolia & Shanxi)
I highly recommend this restaurant! You get to try Chinese food from the Northern, Western, and Northwestern regions!
There’s one thing you should be wary of, when you’re eating at any restaurant in China. The country has banned smoking indoors but there are folks that will not follow the rules (those folks may consider it more of a “guideline” than a law). So if you’re sensitive to cigarette smoking, you can inform the manager to notify the smoker to stop smoking inside. However, if the smoker fails to comply, the manager or you can inform the police.
Food Touring 
the forth Chinese word is not quite right. (sound the same by not quite the same word) you should use the forth word I text you from your phone.
峳 should be 莜
Changed it. Thanks!
After searching online about this èé¢ ï¼èé¢-You-Oat noodleï¼here is the info: (Translating from Google. Obviously it full of grammatical error. [?] )
Noodle made from the flour of naked oats called yóu mià n (èé¢). After fine production become food, YouMain the nutrition ingredient is seven times more than other regular flour nutrients, can be comparable with refined flour. Noodle contains calcium , phosphorus , iron , riboflavin body needs a variety of nutrients and drugs and other ingredients that can treat and prevent diabetes , coronary heart disease , arteriosclerosis , hypertension and other diseases.YouMain, in the same time contains a special substance – linoleic acid , it is for the human metabolism has obvious effect. Noodle (yóu mià n) is naked oats ground into flour, in Shanxi, Inner Mongolia region is also oat noodles food collectively. Chinese name You-Main (Noodle) The main raw material Naked oats Whether or not containing preservative No The main nutrients Calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin, linoleic
oh wow, so it *is* healthy!