The food culture in Tianjin is very famous at home and abroad. A lot of people who travel to Tianjin are particularly going for the Tianjin food. Tianjin dishes are with a history of over 300 years and thousands of varieties.
The distinctive food streets in Tianjin are South Market Food Street, Flavor Food Street in Heping district and October Food Street. Moreover, there are some time-honored food shops in Tianjin, such as Guishun restaurant, Xiangde restaurant, Zhengxingde tea shop, Yipinxiang cake shop and so on.
“Encyclopedia of Chinese Cooking” has selected 20 representative Tianjin dishes and 20 Tianjin snacks. The most famous snacks are Goubuli buns, 18th Street Fried Dough Twists and Erduoyan fried cake. The Goubuli buns get its name from the story of its founder whose surname is Dog. The buns he made are so tasty that many people come to buy the buns. Consequently, Mr. Dog has to keeping making the buns and has no time to serve the customers. People gave a nickname for this shop “Goubuli” which means Mr. Dog is too busy to pay attention to the customers. The Erduoyan fried cake got its name from the place called “Erduoyan Alley” where the first Erduoyan fried cake was next to. All of the three Tianjin snacks can be traced back to Qing Dynasty.
Besides the three snacks above, there are others including Grasshopper Pancake, Hoecake and Fish, Crispy Mung Bean and so on. It is worth mentioning that only Tianjin has Crispy Mung Bean, while other cities usually have crispy rice. The Crispy Mung Bean, battercake and Fried bread stick are the popular breakfast in Tianjin. Tianjin people are very proud of their dishes and snacks.