Street Eats: Convenient and Mess-Free Crayfish at Super Mix
We know that you are no strangers to crayfish, dear readers, but if you're anything like me, you'll often forfeit the chance to eat them due to the effort of cracking them, the hassle of getting rid of the grease and smell from your hands, and the standstill traffic on Guijie, Beijing's ground zero of crayfish joints. However, now we can revel in the fact that the smart people at Super Mix have eradicated all of those factors, shelling crayfish and serving them up with rice, becoming a popular choice across all online food ordering platforms this summer.
Opening their first restaurant in September 2015, Super Mix has already expanded to four restaurants and one delivery shop, testament to their growing reputation. We dropped by the flagship shop located next to Umassif at Shangdu Soho.
Super Mix adopts the style of a fast food restaurant – you order at the counter, pay with cash, Alipay or WeChat, grab your ticket, and the waiter brings the food to you. At 12.15pm, there was already a long line to order, and the delivery guys were busy running in and out.
To keep things simple, there are just four options on the menu: crayfish with rice (original or spicy, RMB 39), ultimate crayfish with rice (RMB 98), meatball with rice (RMB 39) and crayfish with noodle (RMB 39). We ordered the original crayfish with rice, which appeared in under 10 minutes, and comes with a bowl of rice, with broccoli, cashews, sliced potato, and an egg as well as a bowl of the all-important shelled crayfish, making for a hefty portion at a reasonable price. The crayfish sauce proved a little spicy, even though we opted for the original, with a definite hint of chili at the end. We also got a mung bean and osmanthus drink (RMB 8), which contained too much saccharin and reminded me of the cheap mung bean-flavored popsicles found in second tier cities. Yikes.
All in all, Super Mix is always flooded with people who work nearby, and makes for a convenient alternative for those who don’t have the energy to spend hours shelling crayfish themselves. One downside is that some of the flavor is lost using this mess-free method but given that the meal costs half the price of what it would add up to on Guijie, we're certainly not complaining.
Super Mix
Shop 2103, North Tower, Shangdu Soho, 8 Dongdaqiao Lu, Chaoyang District (135 5273 7563)
海盗虾饭: 朝阳区东大桥路8号SOHO尚都北塔一层2103
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Email: tracywang@thebeijinger.com
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Photos: Tracy Wang
