Street Eats: Hearty and Hangover-Curing Inner Mongolian-Style Shumai at Andingmen

As a food writer, the most important (and frequent) query I'm asked is: "What food is your hangover cure?” As you might imagine, we have different answers for different occasions: greasy burgers, fried chicken, soups, dumplings, among anything else doused in oil and readily available. But recently, my answer has come to include Inner Mongolian-style shumai.

Don’t make the mistake of confusing this with Cantonese-style siumai, which is essentially an egg-yolk wrapped dumpling with smashed shrimp filling, and although delicious, probably too overpowering to be a sure-fire hangover cure. Instead, Inner Mongolian-style shumai (烧麦, shaomai), typically stuffed with juicy lamb, are like a beacon beckoning you through your hangover haze. One prime destination for such fare is Anwai Laoma Shaomai at Andingmen. 

Anwai Laoma stacks seven kinds of steamed shumai (RMB 16-38, eight per serving) such as lamb, beef, shrimp, chives and egg, as well as seven kinds of fried shumai, all complemented by a selection of cold dishes. We opted for the popular lamb shumai (RMB 30), and shrimp shumai (RMB 28). The former had a succulent minced mutton and scallion filling, giving it a strong meaty flavor. Its pleats were loosely gathered, and as with pan-fried baozi, you have to attack it carefully, or the soup is likely to splash all over you. Our favorite, however, was the shrimp rendition, which contained whole shrimp, large chunks of shiitake mushroom, and chopped ginger to give a fiery kick.  

The cold dishes here, however, misfire badly. The Inner Mongolian-style mixed cold dish (RMB 20) had too much mushy sweet potato vermicelli. Even worse, it was lukewarm, to the point where even the shredded carrot and bean sprouts had gone limp and lost their crunch. Though good, the intestine soups (RMB 12-26) might be too hot for this time of year, and are worth revisiting in the winter.

There are also pots of tea on each table to soothe customers' palates after they finish their oily and juicy shumai. But not everyone is drinking tea; as with many local restaurants in Beijing, one of the main draws here is watching the hardcore local dashu bingeing on bottles of baijiu at lunchtime. They, like the service, are laid-back and won't judge when you groggily order yet another round of moreish shrimp shumai to soak up the weekend.

Anwai Laoma Shaomai
Mon-Fri 9am-2.30pm, 7-9pm. Sat-Sun 9am-9pm. 112 Andingmen Neidajie, Dongcheng District (135 2214 0213)
安内老马稍麦：东城区安定门内大街112号

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Photos: Tracy Wang