I happened upon jianbing, the latest Chinese wrap-and-roll craze to hit North America, by accident. It was during the Vancouver International Film Festival. I had just come out of International Village Mall (previously known as Tinseltown) and was picking up a few things at T&T Supermarket, when I noticed the new sandwich bar next to the barbecue meats counter.
Wow, barbecue duck pancakes for $4.99 and steamed pork sandwiches for $3.99. I ordered one of each and was feeling quite pleased with the discovery. T&T has made-to-order sandwich bars in its Metrotown, Ora and Marine Gateway locations. But this one, in Chinatown, had just opened two weeks earlier.
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After the clerk handed me my small wrapped packages, a young gentleman sidled up to the counter and ordered a Tianjin pancake. The clerk quickly got to work, ladling a scoop of whole-wheat batter onto a hot griddle. Wait! My pancake wasn't cooked to order. What's this?
"It's great, isn't it?" the young man exclaimed. "I used to eat these all the time in China. I've been coming here every day since they opened."
We both watched hungrily as she assembled his stuffed pancake.
The savoury batter, which I later discovered is a mix of whole wheat and mung bean flours, was barely set when she cracked an egg over top, spreading it around with a wooden paddle so it scrambled slightly right into the thin crêpe. She sprinkled the topside with white sesame seeds, chopped green onions and cilantro, then flipped it over so the seasoning would be absorbed into the golden underside.
Working quickly, she spread dark, sticky hoisin sauce over the pale golden-spotted surface streaked with gently cooked white egg and yellow yolk.
"Hot sauce?" she asked, gently lifting the crepe's edges and loosening it from the griddle so it didn't burn. The young man nodded.
"Meat?" He pointed to rough-chopped pieces of barbecue duck, Chinese sausage and fatty roast beef in the counter display.
"Vegetables?" He pointed to cucumber, iceberg lettuce and cilantro. "Lots and lots of cilantro," he requested.
(The board display is a bit confusing. The Tianjin pancake can be ordered plain for $3.99, or with beef or sausage for $4.99. What the young man had requested was the assorted wrap roll, advertised as an in-store special, which comes with three types of meats and vegetables for $5.99.)
"This?" she asked, holding up a brittle sheet of fried wonton dough (jianbing guozi). "Or Chinese doughnut?" She pointed to a greasy fried dough stick (tiao), which looked like a twisted French cruller.
John Lehmann/For The Globe and Mail
She cracked the guozi into sharp pieces, laid it down the centre of the crepe atop the meat and vegetables, folded it all into a big, fat, loosely wrapped roll, bundled it inside a sheet of waxed paper, affixed it with a price tag and handed it over.
"Uh, could I please have one of those?" I asked the clerk, glancing down at my regular barbecue duck pancake, which seemed so puny in comparison. "I'd like a fresh pancake."
"Yours is fresh," she admonished. "It was cooked an hour ago."
Maybe. (The lighter barbecue duck pancake was very soft and fresh.) But it wasn't the same as the monstrous Tianjin assorted wrap with its hot, herb-encrusted pancake, generous fillings, sweet and spicy sauces and crunchy wonton surprise at the centre.
I was so impressed. "You've got to check it out," I told anyone who would listen. "I've discovered the best sandwich deal in town."
A few days later, I was reading a story in the San Francisco Chronicle about jianbing, "the next big food trend" that has "recently taken New York by storm and was making inroads in the Bay Area."
That's my sandwich. I did some research, and sure enough, this eggy Northern Chinese crepe, a street-corner breakfast specialty in Tianjin and Beijing, is becoming one of the hottest hipster Asian-food takeovers since bacon ramen and kimchi bao buns. A popular food-truck item, you can find them at Manhattan's Flying Pig stuffed with pork belly or tuna melt, at the Seattle street cart Bing of Fire, and Portland's Bing Mi.
Here in Vancouver, jiangbing hasn't yet hit the mainstream. There is a food truck called EAT Chicken Wraps, which is owned by two brothers from Tianjin. They apparently make a crunchy Chinese green-onion pancake wrap, which sounds like jianbing, along with a kung pao lettuce wrap and a Mexican al pastor wrap. But good luck finding the truck. It doesn't have a regular schedule or appear to be on the streets very often.
A better bet is O'Tray Noodle in Richmond's President Plaza food court, across the street from Aberdeen Centre. This is a small mom-and-pop stall that has been around for years – or at least it looks that way from all grimy batter that has collected in the counter's dingy corners.
O'Tray may not appear overly hygienic, but it extremely busy at lunch hour. True to Chinese tradition, the stall is only open during the day, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. (closed on Wednesdays).
The $4.75 Tian jin jianbing, which is what they call it here, is a more modest wrap without any meat or vegetable fillings. But compared to the T&T version, the crepe is much more thin and delicate, pocked with airy bubbles and edged in lacy crispness. The crunchy fried wonton is softer, probably because it's so greasy and likely fresher. When being assembled on the griddle, the crepe is folded tighter and smashed, making it a very compact, square, easy-to-eat Chinese McMuffin.
The lightness of O'Tray's barely grilled crepe and the puffy meltiness of the wonton make this jiangbing far superior to T&T's. It is a snack, not a sandwich, but still well worth trying. Go now, before jiangbing becomes trendy and you can say you were an early adopter.
