Shaanxi · snack
Rou Jia Mo (Chinese Hamburger)
肉夹馍 · Ròujiāmó
Stewed pork or beef in a flatbread bun. Shaanxi's portable street food, increasingly nationalised.
Rou jia mo is a Shaanxi street-food classic — stewed and chopped pork (or beef, or beef-and-cumin in halal versions) stuffed into a small wheat-flour flatbread. The pork version uses pork belly and shoulder slow-stewed in a complex spice broth (star anise, cinnamon, cloves, fennel) for hours, then chopped. The bread (mo) is a thin baked round. Increasingly served in chains nationwide; the original Shaanxi version remains the benchmark.
Where to try
Xi'an: Lao Liu Jia (institutional). Nationally: Xi An Famous Foods (originally a Manhattan business that returned to China).
Dietary notes
Wheat. Pork (default) or beef (halal).
Cities to try Rou Jia Mo (Chinese Hamburger)
Other northwest dishes
- Biangbiang Noodlesbiáng biáng 面
Wide, hand-pulled, belt-shaped Shaanxi noodles. The 'biang' character is the most complex in the Chinese language.
- Big Plate Chicken大盘鸡
A large-portioned Xinjiang braised chicken dish with potatoes, peppers and thick hand-pulled belt noodles.
- Hand-Grasped Lamb手抓羊肉
Large bone-in lamb pieces boiled in spiced water and eaten by hand — a communal dish of Inner Mongolia and the northwest.
- Laghman (Hand-Pulled Noodles with Lamb)拉条子
Uyghur hand-pulled wheat noodles with a lamb-and-vegetable sauce of tomato, pepper and onion.