Mongolian Hospitality: Ordos Restaurant Offers Grassland Flavors

Although you may not detect any “Milky Fragrance Floating” in the air, this oddly named restaurant (乳香飘飘) delivers plenty of grassland favorites, dairy-themed and otherwise, from the Ordos Banner.

In true Inner Mongolian fashion, one can breakfast on puffed rice (RMB 8) soaked in milk tea (RMB 10), feast on all manner of grilled mutton (RMB 68-108), and quaff flasks of fermented mare’s milk liquor (RMB 15-88). But there’s more to Mongolian cuisine than mutton and milk.

The steppe also offers up such wild indigenous wonders like crisp, tubular “desert scallion” (shacong, RMB 16), sautéed with chillies and served cold or mashed with potatoes. Hearty oat (youmian) and buckwheat (qiaomai mian) noodles (RMB 16-20) are generously sized and powerfully meaty – this is, after all, real Mongolian hospitality.

To complete the experience, all tables are set in yurts, which are dim and dingy, but this, too, is true to Mongolian style.

Standout dishes: Qiangban shacong (炝拌沙葱 cold sautéed desert scallion), grilled mutton, qiaomian geda (荞面疙瘩 buckwheat noodles)

Ordos Restaurant 乳香飘飘
Daily 10am-2pm, 4.30-9pm. 3 Shanglong Beixiang, Andingmenwai Dajie (just outside the east gate of Qingnianhu Park, in the residential compound), Dongcheng District (8412 4216)
东城区安定门外大街上龙北巷3号(青年湖公园东门)

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