Xi'an Food Guide: Paomo, Roujiamo, Noodles and Where to Eat Them

If you eat only a few things in Xi'an, make them a bowl of lamb or beef paomo (bread you tear yourself into a rich soup), a roujiamo (a flatbread sandwich of chopped meat), a plate of wide biangbiang noodles or oil-splashed noodles, and a cold bowl of liangpi noodles. Xi'an is a wheat city, so almost everything comes as bread, noodles or dumplings, and much of the best food is halal, cooked by the city's Hui Muslim community. The food is sour, garlicky and chili-fragrant rather than numbing like Sichuan food, and you can ask for less chili anywhere. The Muslim Quarter is worth one evening, but the side streets around it and a few other neighborhoods give you better food for less. Below: what each dish is and how to eat it, where to go, what halal means here, how spicy it is, how to order and pay, vegetarian and allergy notes, food safety, and rough costs.

What to eat in Xi'an, and how to eat it

Many of Xi'an's best-known snacks are on official heritage lists. The city's national-level intangible heritage list includes three food crafts: Tongshengxiang's beef and lamb paomo, Laosunjia's lamb paomo, and Jia San's soup dumplings. The provincial list adds rice-skin noodles from Qinzhen, Fanji's braised-pork roujiamo, Chunfasheng's hulutou paomo, Xing Laosan's meatball hulatang, Shangzhai's oil-splashed noodles and several more. Those names are a good shortlist of what to eat. In 2016, the city's market regulator also issued recommended (not compulsory) local cooking standards for five snacks: roujiamo, beef and lamb paomo, hulutou paomo, biangbiang noodles and buckwheat hele noodles from Lantian.

Paomo: lamb or beef soup with bread you tear yourself

Paomo (泡馍, pàomó, "soaked bread") is the dish Xi'an is best known for, and the one that confuses visitors most. You order lamb (羊肉泡馍, yángròu pàomó) or beef (牛肉泡馍, niúròu pàomó). The official English name, set in the city's 2016 snack standards, is "Pita Bread Soaked in Lamb Soup" (or "Beef Soup"). Lamb is the classic; beef is a little lighter.

Here is how it works at a traditional shop:

1. You pay and get one or two rounds of dense, dry, unleavened bread (馍, mó) and an empty bowl.
2. You sit down and break the bread into the bowl yourself. The traditional standard is pieces about the size of a soybean, made by breaking, tearing, pinching and shaking off the crumbs. This takes a while — budget 10 to 20 minutes, and expect sore fingertips. Small pieces soak up the broth evenly; big lumps stay dry in the middle.
3. You hand the bowl back. Most shops clip a numbered tag to it so it comes back to you. The kitchen cooks the bread in mutton or beef broth with sliced meat and glass noodles.
4. It comes back with a side dish of chili sauce, sweet pickled garlic and coriander. Eat a clove of the sweet garlic between mouthfuls; it cuts the richness, and locals take it seriously.

When you hand over the bowl you can say how much broth you want. The four styles you will hear:

• 干泡 (gān pào, "dry soak") — the broth is all absorbed, with almost no liquid left in the bowl.
• 口汤 (kǒu tāng, "a mouthful of soup") — when you finish, there should be just one spoonful of broth left. This is the style many regulars order.
• 水围城 (shuǐ wéi chéng, "water around the city") — a mound of bread in the middle with broth around it. Good if you tore your pieces a bit big.
• 单走 (dān zǒu, "separately") — bread and soup come in different bowls, and you dip the bread in yourself. Good for a first try.

If you say nothing, you get the shop's default, which is fine. Two habits of regulars: eat from the edge of the bowl inward, and don't stir it all together, so each spoonful stays hot. Many shops will now break the bread for you or use machine-cut bread if you ask; the texture is a bit different, but no one minds.

Roujiamo: two kinds, and the difference matters

Roujiamo (肉夹馍, ròujiāmó, "meat in a bun"; official English name "Rougamo") is a round griddled bun split open and filled with chopped meat. People call it the Chinese hamburger. There are two quite different versions, and you should know which one you are buying:

• Braised pork (腊汁肉夹馍, làzhī ròujiāmó) — pork slow-cooked in a dark spiced stock, chopped with some fat and a spoon of the cooking liquid, inside a crisp white bun. This is the original Xi'an style, and Fanji's version is on the provincial heritage list. It is not halal, so you will not find it on the Muslim Quarter's main streets.
• Halal beef or lamb (腊牛肉夹馍, là niúròu jiāmó) — cured, spiced beef (sometimes lamb), usually chopped with green pepper, in a thicker, softer bun. This is what the Muslim Quarter sells.

At a pork shop you can say 肥瘦 (féi shòu, "fat and lean mixed", the default and the juiciest) or 纯瘦 (chún shòu, "all lean"). Try both kinds of roujiamo; they taste like two different dishes.

The standard lunch is the "three Qin set" (三秦套餐, sān qín tàocān): a roujiamo, a bowl of liangpi and a bottle of Bingfeng (冰峰, bīngfēng), the local orange soda. Many small shops sell it as a combo.

Noodles: biangbiang, oil-splashed and saozi

Shaanxi people eat noodles every day, and Xi'an has more kinds than you will get through in one trip. The three to know:

• Biangbiang noodles (biángbiáng 面, biángbiáng miàn; official English "biangbiang noodles") — hand-pulled noodles as wide as a belt, which is why they are also called 裤带面 (kùdài miàn, "trouser-belt noodles"). The name is said to come from the slapping sound the dough makes on the counter, and the written character is famous for having dozens of strokes. They usually come oil-splashed, sometimes with a tomato-and-egg or braised-meat topping, or as a mixed bowl of two or three toppings.
• Oil-splashed noodles (油泼面, yóupō miàn) — the city's signature way of finishing noodles. Chili flakes, garlic, spring onion and salt go on top of plain boiled noodles, and then very hot oil is poured over them so the chili sizzles. Stir it through before you eat. Shangzhai's oil-splashed noodles are on the provincial heritage list. Biangbiang noodles are often served this way; the two names overlap on menus.
• Saozi noodles (臊子面, sàozi miàn) — thin noodles in a sour, lightly spicy broth, topped with small diced pork, egg, tofu and vegetables. The sour broth is the point. Bowls are often small, and people order several. Qishan-style saozi noodles are the famous version; the topping is usually pork, though halal shops make a beef version.

If you want to see biangbiang noodles pulled and slapped, sit near the open kitchen at a busy noodle shop at lunch. A good noodle shop often sells only noodles, with the dish names painted on the wall.

Cold noodles: liangpi, mipi and ganmianpi

Liangpi (凉皮, liángpí, "cold skin") is a sheet of steamed batter cut into wide, slippery noodles and served cold with chili oil, vinegar, garlic water and small spongy cubes of wheat gluten. It is tangy rather than heavy, and Xi'an people eat it year-round. Three versions you will see:

• Mipi (米皮, mǐpí, "rice skin") — made from rice, soft and smooth. Qinzhen in Huyi District is the famous home of it, and its craft is on the provincial heritage list.
• Mianpi (面皮, miànpí, "wheat skin") — made from wheat, a little firmer. This is what most shops sell as liangpi.
• Ganmianpi (擀面皮, gǎnmiànpí, "rolled wheat skin") — chewier, with more bite, from the Baoji area west of Xi'an.

There is also a sesame-paste version (麻酱凉皮, májiàng liángpí), richer and nuttier — skip it if you are allergic to sesame.

Breakfast and sweet snacks

• Hulatang (胡辣汤, húlàtāng, "peppery soup") — a thick, peppery beef broth with beef meatballs, potato, cabbage and carrot. It is a breakfast dish, eaten with a flatbread torn into it. The halal meatball style is the local one; Xing Laosan's version is on the provincial heritage list. Shops often sell out by late morning.
• Zenggao (甑糕, zènggāo) — sticky rice steamed for hours with red dates and red beans in a big metal pot, sliced to order. Sweet, heavy and a common breakfast.
• Persimmon cakes (黄桂柿子饼, huángguì shìzi bǐng) — small cakes of persimmon pulp and flour, fried golden and filled with sweet osmanthus, walnut or red bean paste. Eat them hot; the filling can burn your mouth.
• Jinggao (镜糕, jìnggāo, "mirror cake") — a small round steamed rice cake on a stick, topped with colored sugar, sesame or sweet sauce. You will see it on every tourist street.
• Soup dumplings (灌汤包子, guàntāng bāozi) — small steamed buns filled with meat and hot broth; the Muslim Quarter versions are beef or lamb. Bite a small hole and sip the broth first.
• Lamb skewers (羊肉串, yángròu chuàn) — grilled over charcoal with cumin and chili, sold everywhere in the evening.

The ones to try if you are curious

Hulutou (葫芦头, húlu tóu; the official English name is simply "hulutou") is paomo made with pork intestines and a rich pork bone broth. The intestines are cleaned well and the broth is milky and savory, but the texture is chewy and the smell is stronger than lamb paomo. Many visitors try one bowl and are glad they did; some stop after two spoonfuls. Chunfasheng's hulutou is the long-established version on the provincial list. It is pork, so it is not halal. If offal is a hard no for you, skip it — the rest of this list is more than enough.

Where to eat: pick an area, not a famous restaurant

Famous names change quality over time and branches vary, so a better plan is to know which areas suit which kind of meal. Here is how the main areas compare.

The Muslim Quarter main street (Beiyuanmen). The Muslim Quarter (回民街, Huímín Jiē) is not one street but an area of several streets, including Beiyuanmen (北院门), Xiyangshi (西羊市) and Dapiyuan (大皮院), next to the Drum Tower and a short walk west of the Bell Tower; it is an open neighborhood with no entry ticket. Beiyuanmen, the halal food street, runs north for about 500 metres from the archway under the Drum Tower. This main street is the one every tour group walks: crowded from late afternoon, loud, with vendors pounding peanut candy for the cameras and higher prices than the rest of the city. It is worth walking once in the evening when the lights are on. For an actual meal, turn off it.

Xiyangshi, Dapiyuan and the lanes behind. These streets are still part of the Muslim Quarter but feel more like a neighborhood where people live and shop. Dapiyuan has a concentration of long-running shops and well-known snacks — lamb paomo, biangbiang noodles, soup dumplings and zenggao — and Laosunjia's paomo restaurant is there. Xiyangshi is narrow and lined with snack stalls and halal butchers. Eat here instead of on Beiyuanmen, and visit the Great Mosque on Huajue Lane (化觉巷, Huàjué Xiàng), the best known of the area's mosques, while you are nearby.

Sajinqiao (洒金桥, Sǎjīnqiáo). This street at the west end of the Muslim Quarter used to be the place locals recommended to escape the crowds. It is now lined with snack shops alongside chain bubble-tea stores, and together with Dapiyuan and the Xicang market it draws plenty of visitors from other cities too. It is still a good, slightly less staged place to eat paomo, roujiamo and grilled meat, and the side lanes running off it are calmer than Beiyuanmen.

Yongxingfang (永兴坊, Yǒngxīngfāng). A food street inside Zhongshan Gate (the Little East Gate) on the east side of the old city, built on the site of a Tang-dynasty neighborhood and recognized as a Shaanxi intangible-heritage culture street; it is divided into eight sections, with streets themed on central, southern and northern Shaanxi alongside craft workshops, heritage and souvenir streets, and has more than a hundred businesses plus a Shaanxi opera museum. Most stalls show their prices, it is less chaotic than Beiyuanmen, and it is good for trying dishes from Hanzhong in the south or northern Shaanxi in one place. It is also where you can drink a small bowl of rice wine and smash the bowl (摔碗酒, shuāi wǎn jiǔ, "bowl-smashing wine") — touristy, but people enjoy it. It is generally open from mid-morning until about 10:30 pm (check on the day), and the nearest metro stations are Chaoyangmen and Wulukou on Line 1. For dinner rather than a late snack, go before 21:00.

Xiaozhai and the Big Wild Goose Pagoda area. In the south of the city, the big shopping malls around Xiaozhai (小寨, Xiǎozhài) have floors of restaurants and food courts: clean, air-conditioned, with picture menus and QR ordering. They are a reliable fallback on a hot or rainy day or with children. Nearby, Yucai Road (育才路, Yùcái Lù) is an 800-metre restaurant street close to the Shaanxi History Museum, the Big Wild Goose Pagoda and Datang Everbright City, where, according to the district market regulator, all 41 restaurants on the street had installed kitchen cameras by May 2025 for remote monitoring. That makes it a convenient place to eat between the museum and an evening at the pagoda.

Datang Everbright City. The Tang-themed night walking street south of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda has plenty of snack stalls. It is a show street, so treat the food as a snack while you walk, not dinner. One helpful thing: most vendors there use price labels that show the price, the portion weight and a photo together, so you know what you are paying for.

Breakfast and late night. Breakfast is where Xi'an food is most local. Look for a busy shop near your hotel selling hulatang, zenggao or steamed buns from about 7:00; by 10:00 the best pots are often empty. At night the Muslim Quarter's grills run late, and many neighborhood streets have skewer and noodle places open into the evening. If you are taking the metro back, check the last train on our Xi'an metro last-train times page before you order another round.

If you would rather have someone lead you through the side lanes on your first evening — explaining Hui food, ordering for you and picking the stalls — small-group Muslim Quarter food walks can be booked on Klook. After one guided evening, ordering on your own is much easier. To fit meals around the Terracotta Army and the City Wall, see our 2-day Xi'an itinerary.

Halal is the base of Xi'an food

The Muslim Quarter is home to more than 20,000 Muslims and has about ten mosques. Most residents are Hui (回族, Huízú), Chinese-speaking Muslims, and they have cooked in this part of the city for centuries. Much of what visitors think of as "Xi'an food" — beef and lamb paomo, beef roujiamo, hulatang, soup dumplings, lamb skewers — is Hui food.

Shaanxi has its own law on halal food. Halal businesses must show the halal mark — usually the characters 清真 (qīngzhēn, "halal") — clearly on their name, sign and packaging, and businesses that are not halal may not use the mark or advertise halal food. A small family-run halal business must be owned by a Hui or other ethnic-minority citizen, and the people who buy, prepare and cook the food must be too. Markets, supermarkets, malls and hotels that sell halal food must keep it in a separate area or counter. You can read the full text of the Shaanxi halal food regulation on the provincial government site (in Chinese).

What this means for you:

• Muslim travelers: Xi'an is one of the easiest cities in China to eat in. Look for 清真 on the sign, which is widely used and protected by provincial law. The Muslim Quarter and many shops across the city are halal, and most halal restaurants here do not serve alcohol. Our halal food guide covers apps, chains and how to judge places in other cities.
• Everyone else: Don't bring pork or other food that is forbidden under halal rules into a halal restaurant; the same Shaanxi law says it may not be carried in or eaten on halal premises. That includes a braised-pork roujiamo bought down the street. Don't bring beer in either. Ask before you photograph people inside a mosque, and dress modestly if you visit one.
• Pork dishes: Braised-pork roujiamo, hulutou and most saozi noodles are pork. You will find them at non-halal shops outside the Muslim Quarter, often marked with the dish name in big characters.

Is Xi'an food spicy?

Moderately, and in a different way from Sichuan. Xi'an's heat comes from 油泼辣子 (yóupō làzi), chili flakes with hot oil poured over them. It is fragrant and toasty with a medium burn, and there is little or no Sichuan pepper, so you won't get the tingling, numbing feeling of Chengdu food. The other two big flavors are vinegar (醋, cù) — it goes on noodles, liangpi and dumplings — and garlic, raw or pickled. Many dishes are sour and garlicky first and spicy second.

The good news: in most Xi'an dishes the chili is added at the end, so it is easy to leave out. Noodles, liangpi and roujiamo can all be made with less or none. Locals say 辣子 (làzi) for chili rather than the standard 辣椒 (làjiāo), and using their word helps. Phrases to show on your phone:

Oil-splashed noodles without chili are just noodles with hot oil, garlic and spring onion, which is still good. The dishes where you can't easily change the heat are saozi noodles (the broth is made ahead) and hulatang, which is peppery rather than chili-hot.

Ordering and paying without Chinese

Most small shops have a Chinese-only menu on the wall, but ordering is easier than it looks. Many places have photos of each dish, so you can point. Others have a QR code on the table that opens a menu on your phone, usually with pictures. For a text-only menu, a translation app with a camera mode reads it for you; our translation apps comparison shows which ones work well in China. At a paomo shop the order of things is the unusual part: pay or order first, get your bread and bowl, break the bread at your table, then take the bowl back to the counter. If you are unsure, watch the table next to you. Our guide to ordering food with zero Chinese has the full method, including what to do when a QR menu asks for a Chinese phone number.

Paying is simple: almost every restaurant and stall, including Muslim Quarter vendors, takes Alipay (支付宝, Zhīfùbǎo) or WeChat Pay (微信支付, Wēixìn Zhīfù) by QR code. Both accept foreign cards — Alipay lists Visa, Mastercard, JCB, Diners Club and Discover, and WeChat Pay also takes American Express and UnionPay International cards, but check the add-card screen in each app for the current list. Officially, visitors can also pay by bank card, cash or digital yuan, but small food shops run on QR codes. Carry some small notes as a backup; renminbi cash is legal tender and businesses may not refuse it. Our overview of Chinese payment systems explains which app to set up first. No one expects a tip.

Vegetarian, vegan and allergies

Vegetarian and vegan. Xi'an is easier than you might expect, because so much of its food is noodles and bread. Good options:

• Liangpi, mipi and ganmianpi — no meat, though the chili oil and vinegar dressing is sometimes made with other ingredients, so say what you don't eat.
• Oil-splashed noodles or biangbiang noodles with only the oil-splash topping, or with tomato and egg if you eat eggs.
• Vegetable steamed buns, zenggao, persimmon cakes and jinggao.
• Cold vegetable dishes at sit-down restaurants.

Be careful with paomo, roujiamo, hulatang and saozi noodles: all are built on meat or meat broth. Noodle soups usually use bone stock even when there is no meat on top. Say 我吃素 (wǒ chī sù, "I'm vegetarian") and 不要肉，不要肉汤 (bú yào ròu, bú yào ròu tāng, "no meat, no meat broth"). For a full vegetarian meal, search 素食 (sùshí, "vegetarian food") in your map app; Buddhist vegetarian restaurants are often near the big temples. More phrases are in our vegetarian and vegan guide.

Gluten. Xi'an is a hard city for coeliacs. The bread, the noodles, the soup dumplings and the gluten cubes in liangpi are all wheat, and soy sauce and vinegar can contain wheat too. Mipi (rice-based) and rice-and-date zenggao are the main naturally wheat-free snacks, but sauces and shared equipment make them risky for a strict diet.

Other allergies. Show a card in Chinese naming your allergen: peanut 花生, sesame 芝麻, tree nuts 坚果, wheat or gluten 小麦 / 麸质, egg 鸡蛋, soy 大豆. Restaurant dishes and food made and sold on the spot are not covered by China's allergen labeling rules. A new national standard makes allergen warnings compulsory on packaged food from 16 March 2027 (until then the older, voluntary rules apply), and even then sesame is not one of the eight groups that must be flagged. In Xi'an, peanuts show up in peanut candy and some cold dishes, sesame in sesame-paste liangpi, sesame seeds and some chili oils. Our food safety and dietary guide has ready-made card wording.

Is it safe to eat? Hygiene faces, tap water, stalls and prices

Licensed restaurants display a food-safety grade at the door or in the dining area. Under the national scheme, each inspection produces a grade shown as a cartoon face — a big laugh for excellent, a smile for good, a flat face for average — plus a yearly grade of A, B or C. The design of the sign varies by city, but the rule is the same everywhere: the bigger the smile, or the closer to A, the better. A laughing or smiling face and a full dining room are both good signs.

Tap water. Xi'an's water bureau publishes monthly test results for water leaving the city's treatment plants, which meets the national drinking-water standard, along with checks on water at the tap; you can see an example in the Xi'an Water Bureau's monthly water-quality report. Passing those tests still does not make tap water safe to drink straight from the tap. The advice from the China CDC is to drink boiled water, because pipes can contaminate treated water and boiling for one to three minutes kills germs. Use the hotel kettle, buy bottled water, and drink the hot water or tea that restaurants serve.

Street stalls. Stalls don't show a grade, so choose by eye: a line of residents, food cooked hot in front of you, clean oil, and nothing sitting lukewarm in the sun. Grilled skewers cooked to order are usually safe; cold dishes like liangpi are best from a busy shop that sells out each day.

Prices on the tourist streets. The common problem on Beiyuanmen is not bad food but unclear prices, especially for things sold by weight: dried fruit, nuts, beef jerky and some sweets. Before a vendor starts scooping, ask the price per jin (斤, jīn, half a kilo) and say how much you want. Prefer stalls with a printed price and portion on the board. Cooked dishes and skewers with a listed price are rarely a problem.

Your stomach. Lamb fat, chili oil and a lot of bread in a few days can upset anyone, and that usually is not food poisoning. Have one heavy meal a day and lighter noodles or liangpi in between. For a bad stomach, a pharmacy is the first stop; our food safety guide covers what to ask for. See a doctor if you have a fever, blood in your stool, or symptoms that last more than a day or two.

What it costs, roughly

Everyday Xi'an food is cheap by Western standards. A bowl of noodles, a roujiamo or a plate of liangpi from a neighborhood shop is a small-change meal in the low tens of yuan at most, and a bowl of paomo at a famous old shop costs more but is still a cheap meal by any Western measure. Snacks on the tourist streets are small and priced accordingly; for example, in 2025 a reporter recorded jinggao at Datang Everbright City at 5 to 7 yuan each, depending on size. Expect higher prices on Beiyuanmen and around the big sights than a few streets away, and trust the price on the board or the QR screen. For everything else to see and do in the city, start with our Xi'an complete guide, and see the best street food cities in China for how Xi'an compares.

Last updated: October 2026