Street food & snacks · Shaanxi
Roujiamo
肉夹馍 — Often called the world’s oldest burger: chopped slow-braised pork packed into a fresh-baked flatbread. Xi’an’s most essential two-dollar meal.
The pork (la zhi rou) is braised for hours in a twenty-spice brine that old shops maintain continuously — legends speak of broths a century old. The bread (baiji) is baked in a clay oven so it’s crisp outside, chewy within, and split only when ordered. The assembly takes ten seconds and defines Xi’an street food.
The classic order is "la zhi" pork with a bit of fat, or a leaner "chun shou" version. In the Muslim Quarter the equivalent is the beef variant. Fan Ji and the Zhoushibian counters are the old names; any shop with a line of schoolchildren at 4 p.m. will do.
Where to eat it
- Fan Ji Roujiamo (Zhushibian Street, Xi’an)
- Muslim Quarter beef roujiamo counters
Named tables that do it well
- Tong Sheng Xiang — Local Institution
- De Fa Chang — Local Institution
- Fan Ji Roujiamo — Local Institution
- Lao Sun Jia — Local Institution
Routes that eat their way here
More dishes to know
- Dumplings (饺子)
- Jianbing (煎饼果子)
- Xinjiang Lamb Skewers (烤羊肉串)
- Oyster Omelette (Ou Ah Jian) (海蛎煎)
- Cong You Bing (Scallion Pancake) (葱油饼)
- Yangrou Paomo (羊肉泡馍)