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Try Chinese Jianbing .
By Mark Wang, owner
For the first time in South Florida, people can enjoy authentic Chinese Jianbing at downtown Fort Lauderdale, on a food trailer. Food truck business is for crazy people, especially when you tried to customize a brand new trailer during the pandemic with the heated inflation. And you have to strike all your efforts to study the city zoning map and regulation, get the inspection and all the paper work done like a DBPR certificate plus tax receipt.
So, what is Jianbing? It is a delicious mung-bean batter crepe filled with fried crispy cracker, egg, and scallions.
There is always something special in one’s destiny——Jianbing is mine.
Before moving to the U.S., I was a social science and ESL teacher at an elite public high school in Beijing, which is not easy at the point. After my wife luckily securing a working visa, I followed her to Long Island, NY in 2019 and then settled down in South Florida in 2021. My valuable memories and skills of Jianbing dated back to my childhood. https://www.seriouseats.com/ jianbing-chinese-savory-breakfast-crepe.
For quite a long time before I got admitted into a boarding high school in the core city of Beijing, I was living in a suburban area and my neighbor was a Jianbing master. This kind senior gentleman, with his adopted a granddaughter, made a hard but sweet living by running a Jianbing cart every morning on a daily basis. I still remember that my mom would bring two eggs from home to save money, waiting for fifteen minutes or even longer to get me a fresh and hot savory Jianbing, while I was sleeping late on cold winter mornings. And I would help him fry crispy crackers after I got back from elementary school.
Those Jianbing fed me well and I always love eating Jianbing.
I feel like Jianbing can be well interpreted as an oriental quesadilla or savory crepe, just like how I put it on my food trailer’s wrapping. Apparently there are different variations of Jianbing, and since my Jianbing master friend came from a minor ethnic group of muslim in northern China, his recipe focus on the using of mung bean, which is also popular in Indian dosa recipe. Popular superfoods, like quinoa, chia seeds and hemp hearts are added as a twist to my current version of batter.
So far people like my food and I was really impressed by customers who had travelled to China and knew this type of street food. Some of them could even pronounce Jianbing perfectly. While I am helping advocate Chinese foods, I also realize that the past 20 year of “Made in China” story is actually helping me vice versa.
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