{"id":19521,"date":"2016-06-02T13:30:21","date_gmt":"2016-06-02T13:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/letsnomnomblog.com\/?p=19521"},"modified":"2019-06-13T16:11:36","modified_gmt":"2019-06-13T23:11:36","slug":"jianbing-company-smorgasburg-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wazwu.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/02\/jianbing-company-smorgasburg-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Jianbing Company, Smorgasburg 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jianbing<\/p>\n

This post is in collaboration with Jianbing Company.<\/em><\/p>\n

Every NYC foodie knows that Smorgasburg<\/a> is the king of outdoor food markets. Here, you can eat yourself silly and experience the latest and greatest of NYC eats. Jianbing Company<\/a> specializes in one of Shanghai’s biggest street foods and managed to secure one of the highly coveted spots at Smorgasburg 2016. I recently had the opportunity to meet and chat with founders Reuben Shorser and Tadesh Inagaki to learn more about their jianbing story.<\/p>\n

Founders Reuben and Tadesh have known each other since 7th grade music camp. They both went to Princeton, and they’re now roommates at Jianbing Company HQ in Brooklyn. During their Princeton days, Reuben spent some time abroad in China where he discovered jianbing and woke up at the crack of dawn to learn how to make it from a local street vendor. Fast forward a few years, and what they serve at Smorgasburg every weekend is authentic shandong jianbing\u00a0\u5c71\u4e1c\u714e\u997c close to the original that you’ll find all over the streets of Shanghai. (Read: this is not some bastardized version filled with cheese.)<\/p>\n

\"Shandong<\/p>\n

So what exactly is a jianbing? Think of it as a Chinese breakfast crepe. The batter is a mixture of four types of flours: wheat, corn, soy, and millet. Inside, you’ll find an egg, 13 sauce, scallions, cilantro, homemade chili sauce, and crunchy crackers. Instead of using premade wonton wrappers, they make the crackers from scratch, which involves manning a fryer for six hours straight (!!!). You can add chicken, beef, or tofu to make your jianbing more filling. The marinated proteins are organic and hand sliced. They’re sliced thin so the folded jianbing has a shape more like a panini than a roly poly burrito.<\/p>\n

\"Jianbing<\/p>\n

If you want to impress your friends, take note of the difference between jianbing from Tianjin vs. jianbing from Shandong. With the former, the jianbing is flipped before folding so the egg covered crepe surface is on the outside. Jianbing Company makes their jianbing in shandong style, where there is no flipping and all the ingredients remain on the inside for a cleaner finish. Makes it more Instagramable, right?<\/p>\n

Part of the fun of jianbing is the performance. At 11:30am, there was already a line for jianbing and a crowd gathered around to watch them cook. Good thing the Jianbing Company team doesn’t get stage fright. After watching for a while, John joked that maybe we should applaud every time a jianbing was completed.<\/p>\n\n\t\t