The Latest in Beijing Street Food Claims New Zealand Origins with its Sweet Cheesy Toast

Tracy Wang, Senior Editor | Mar 12, 2016 10:22 am | Add a comment | 5589 reads

Walking through the busy streets of downtown Beijing, it’s hard not to notice another streetside stand pop up, especially when there’s a long queue in front that blocks normal pedestrian traffic.

Such is the case with an oddly-named chain of food carts that have popped up in various spots downtown – New Zealand Sweetness Cheese Toast. There's one at the corner of the Dongdaqiao subway station, another north of the northeast corner of the Guomao intersection. Nine others are scattered around town.

The main attraction of this particular cart is warm slices of toast topped with a sweet cheese-like substance (RMB 8 per piece), which according to legend is all the rage in its home country of New Zealand.

The cart's wordy signage makes repeated claims of the snack's international origin. “We imported this cheese toast from New Zealand, it tastes pure New Zealand. We didn’t invent this, but introduce this from New Zealand. We use the traditional kiwi-style to bake it, and use 100 percent Australian fresh milk and fresh cream. It is total New Zealand style.”

Product packaging claims the toast is popular in Taiwan and Korea.

Setting aside any judgement about how New Zealanders – typically ferociously proud of their own dairy industry – feel about a New Zealand cheese cart claiming its key ingredient comes from Australia, we decided to give it a try.

The concoction is lightly sweet, a little salty, and features a suspiciously bright yellow sticky coating atop a slice of the cheapest kind of ordinary supermarket bread. A miserly sprinkling of thinly sliced almonds seals the deal. Not entirely unpleasant, in fact a bit tasty, though "cheesy" would be not a word I'd associate with this item. Served warm, it's something I wouldn't toss out in disgust, but I would think twice about parting with an additional 8 kuai for another slice.

Perhaps most disappointing is the flaccid nature of the "toast". Those expecting the toothsome crunch one would normally associate with a slice toast are in for a floppy surprise.

We tapped into our Kiwi network to check this street snack's origins, and most New Zealanders responded with laughs or a blank stare. New Zealander Jade Gray, co-founder of Gung Ho Pizza, says melted cheese on toast is a true Kiwi tradition, but clearly Beijingers might have put a local spin on this particular treat. “If they added Vegemite between the cheese and toast, then it could be the real deal!” he added.

One local friend speculated that a more appropriate origin story for this street snack would be to pin its roots to Beijing's trendy Xinjiekou (新街口) district rather than Xinxilan (New Zealand 新西兰).

The carts also feature Hong Kong-style egg tarts (RMB 4, 蛋挞, dan ta), some dolloped with scarlet or purple jam in an effort to make them stand out. On our visit they didn't bother to warm them before serving them to us, so unless you are drunk or utterly desperate for carbs, skip these.

Same goes for the other snacks on offer, including durian triangles, laopo bing (老婆饼), and a pile of donuts I was told featured white chocolate topping.

This last is a true affront to the very Chinese term for donut (甜甜圈, tian tian quan), or literally "sweet circles." Whatever chef developed the recipe for these bland dough rings removed any semblance of sweetness that may have once been part of their charm.

There are already 11 locations of Sweetness Cheese in Beijing, and I gotta hand it to them as they obviously know what they are doing in the real estate game. They've scored key high traffic spots in areas such as Xidan, Nanluogu Xiang and Qianmen for their carts. Just like other fads here such as date cakes (枣糕, zao gao) and green bean snacks (绿豆饼, lv dou bing), we have no idea how long this fad will last. Only time will tell.

The faux international origins of New Zealand Sweetness Cheese got us to thinking about the other weird geographic origin stories.

KFC China's New Orleans-style chicken strikes many Americans as nothing they've seen on a menu at KFC, nor a classic dish from the Big Easy; while Thai-style sweet purple sticky rice balls popular in local Thai restaurants may be entirely unfamiliar to the Thai people themselves.

Of course, this confusion works both ways. NBC recently analyzed a year’s worth of ordering data from over 4 million active diners in the US from GrubHub and found General Tso’s Chicken is the most popular Chinese dish in America ... despite the fact that its virtually unknown here in China. Chop Suey and Crab Rangoon also rank high on the list of Americans' favorite "Chinese" food.