Xibei Muslim Food @ Laoxibei Muslim Restaurant 老西北穆斯林饭庄

China has a fairly large number of Muslims, some 20+ million, and mostly concentrated around the North western provinces of Gansu, Xinjiang and Ningxia. As such it is not too difficult to find decent Muslim food. However most Muslim restaurants tend to be the Lanzhou noodles variety and lack a lot of the traditional dishes. Laoxibei Muslim Restaurant (老西北穆斯林饭庄) is one that has a decent menu of traditional northwestern Muslim dishes and is located in the residential area within the Shenzhen High Technology Park.

The first dish is the home cooked potatoes. The predominant spice in the potatoes is cumin (孜然) and this gave the otherwise starchy potatoes a flavour that is extremely pleasant. I think potato chip companies like Lays should really consider making a variant of chips with cumin flavour.



The diced mutton on toothpicks (牙签羊肉) is one of the restaurant's more popular dishes. I noticed that virtually every table in the restaurant had a serving of the diced mutton on toothpicks. Again, the predominant spice is cumin with an assortment of other savoury spices and the mutton cubes that have been marinated and speared with a toothpick are then deep fried till the flavour is brought out. In spite of the deep fry process, the mutton remains tender and juicy. This is best eaten with your fingers holding one end of a toothpick and chewing off the mutton bits.



The bean curd stir fried with garlic chives (韭菜香干) was pretty decently done too. The chives in my opinion is the essential ingredient that makes or breaks the dish. In this instance, the chives made the dish an excellent one, neither too salty or too overpowering.



Finally, the beef in a bucket. I think the dish can be best described as a variant of hot plate beef. The beef is cooked in a pre-heated iron pot along with the spices and other ingredients and the red hot iron pot is then enclosed within the wooden bucket to prevent it from burning anyone who may accidentally touch against it. In my opinion, this dish, while highly recommended by the waiter, was not really worthy of high praise. Firstly, the taste is not much different from the more commonly seen beef on a hot plate and secondly, the beef was just average.



In all, for a change of taste, this place is highly recommended. I would further highly recommend their barbecue mutton sticks (烤羊肉串) which I did not order on this trip.

The address:
Laoxibei, Donghaiwanhao Plaza, Shenzhen High Technology Park, Nanshan, Shenzhen 老西北穆斯林饭庄 深圳南山科技园东海万豪广场
Directions using my Shenzhen Food Map