Chinese street food and noodle restaurant Tasti-Tea opened in the Delmar Loop on March 20, in the space previously occupied by jianbing shop Bing Bing.
Owner Lei Qian added some foliage and other wall decorations, but Tasti-Tea looks similar to its forerunner, seating around 20 diners. The menu was only available in Chinese during our visit, but the translated menu should be ready in the next few days, and Qian and his staff are happy to explain dishes and offer recommendations.
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Like Bing Bing, Tasti-Tea’s specialty is its jianbing, the egg pancake that millions in China grab from street vendors during their morning commutes. This is a relief, as Tasti-Tea takes over from Bing Bing as the only St. Louis venue (that we know of) offering this iconic northern Chinese snack, which has inspired pop-up stalls and food trucks in American cities over the past few years.
At Bing Bing, diners were able to customize jianbing with a variety of meats and other add-ons. In China, street vendors will sometimes offer optional extras, but that’s not standard. Qian told SLM that he wants Tasti-Tea to offer the same style of jianbing as would be served on the streets of his hometown, Tianjin. Jianbing can be found all over China, but Tianjin, a port city less than 100 miles southeast of Beijing, is one of the country’s hotspots for the snack. “I wanted people to try the real thing,” Qian says.
Qian recruited his aunt, Wenhua Qian, to help him realize that aim. She previously owned a restaurant in Indiana, but her jianbing pedigree goes back decades. “My aunt was cooking jianbing in Tianjin 25 years ago, maybe even longer,” Qian says. “So we believe we can make better jianbing.”
Qian’s family recipe for jianbing reverts to its most essential ingredients. Tianjin’s trademark jianbing guozi pancake is made from a batter of green mungbean flour. Other regions use different grains in the batter, and Wenhua’s recipe combines five grains (but Wenhua won’t reveal any more than that). Qian imported equipment from China to ensure Tasti-Tea’s jianbing batter can be prepared the traditional way. An egg is cracked onto the pancake as it cooks on the grill (Tasti-Tea adds two eggs). As the pancake is almost cooked, it is basted with a soybean paste and dressed with green onions and sesame seeds. “The difference is we cook the soy bean paste before we put it on the jianbing,” Qian says.
Guozi is a deep-fried cruller (more commonly known in China as youtiao) placed on top of the pancake before the whole thing is folded up and served. Chinese vendors often replace the cruller with a thin, crispy sheet of fried dough (guobi), which gives the jianbing a more cohesive structure and a striking contrast of soft and crispy textures. Qian prefers this latter method, because fresh guobi can be prepared more easily. Qian says he would need somebody to start work around 1 a.m. every day to prepare fresh cruller.
Jianbing is commonly eaten for breakfast, but it’s great at any time of the day and popular in China as a post-bar snack. Tasti-Tea’s menu features a number of other Chinese street foods, some of which are appearing in St. Louis for the first time. Try the roujiamo, a kind of pork belly sandwich affectionately known as “the Chinese hamburger.” It features stewed pork belly mixed with with cilantro and jalapeños and served on a flatbread. Other budget snacks include pastries like the xian bing, or beef pie, chive pockets, and scallion pancake.
For a heartier meal, there are pork ribs, two beef noodle dishes in rich, warming broths (the Sichuan option is spicier and slightly more oily, with added garlic), and zhajiang mian, a Beijing noodle dish served with a thick soybean paste, meat, and vegetables (pictured above). Brighten your meal with a drink, including the cheese tea, various bubble teas, and visually striking smoothies, such the Blue Sky, White Cloud (pictured below), flavored with Monin blue Curacao syrup.
Qian says the jianbing were a hit on opening weekend, selling out on Saturday and having one left on Sunday.
Qian chose the U City location based on the large numbers of Chinese students from Washington University who frequent the neighborhood. But in the first few days of business, Qian was surprised by how far some of his customers had come. “Our customers have been 90 percent Chinese but not only students,” he says. “So far, we’ve seen people from Chesterfield and even O’ Fallon [Missouri].”
