Chinese Street Food

"Chinese Street Food is brimming with history, food lore, and recipes that take you on a culinary journey outside of the restaurant and into the streets of regional China. Authentic flavors and techniques explode onto the page in a way that first make you salivate, then motivate to roll up your sleeves and get cooking." —Chef Lee Anne Wong

One element of Chinese cookery that remains rare throughout the Western world is the most popular style of cuisine across China: street food! Every day, nearly one-fifth of humanity sustains itself on conveniently placed bites and cheap alfresco meals. In China, one’s home is often small, kitchens are cramped, and time is short. So, a walkable nosh on the way to the office, a quick, cheap lunch, or an evening spent hopping from snack stand to snack stand with friends is an everyday occurrence.

Howie Southworth and Greg Matza, best friends and bestselling food authors, have been eating their way through China for over two decades. Soon after their yearly culinary journeys began, they were struck with a delicious addiction: street food! Within this entertainingly narrated cookbook, our dynamic eating duo not only fondly recalls highlights of their fascination with China’s incredible food culture, but they artfully weave in folklore, origin stories, and witty chats with the cooks, vendors, and fellow gastronomes they’ve met along the way.

Photographed entirely in China, this book beautifully presents small plates from the balmy rice paddies of Yunnan and spicy streets of Sichuan to the frozen tundra of Harbin and the imperial majesty of Beijing. This tale of two foodies is destined to change the way readers view going out for Chinese.

Greg Matza grew up in Los Angeles, weaned on a diet that stretched from Iran to the Philippines to El Salvador—all within a couple of miles from his home. Greg is currently the proud parent of an eighty-thousand-BTU propane burner and a collection of very nice potholders. They all live happily in the San Francisco Bay area.