The exotic secrets of Cow Street

"Hui snacks have three characteristics: they are strong on color, strong on flavor, and heavy on oil, but we eat them with jasmine tea to get a balance," Ma says.

As a general greeting Chinese are in the habit of saying "Have you eaten?" whereas Niujie locals say "Have you made tea?" Ma says.

"A few things distinguish Hui people's food, namely its being incredibly varied, that it carries on from generation to generation, and that each family has its unique approach. It is also seasonal, and a lot of attention is paid to nutritional value."

Ma's family used to make a crisp egg cake called furonggao, which has a red, sweet topping and was very popular. Ma says people used to use food coloring and sugar to make the topping, but his family used saffron.

Feng Qiusheng's family business, which was founded in 1888, used to be in Niujie, but the family business moved to a nearby neighborhood in 2006.

Feng's family now runs two restaurants named on the basis of the family nickname, Baodufeng (Quick-Fried Tripe Feng).

Feng's father taught him how to make the sauce that goes with the family speciality, and Feng says it has taken him more than 40 years to master the art of cooking the tripe.

"Even though the cooking takes only seconds, four generations of hard work have gone into it," Feng, 66, says.

"It's a skill that is easy to learn but hard to perfect."

Each day Feng cooks about 50 kilograms of tripe, and from the day he started to cook in the kitchen in 1985, he says, he has handled at least 500 metric tons of tripe for customers.