 I want to try that. Once you look at the bottom, it's starting to look like a funnel cake. Look at this. Ah, come on. A lot of people think Chinese breakfast is just dim sum, but that's actually a brunch food. It goes much deeper than that. We try eight different distinct styles of morning foods from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Guang Zhou, Chinese from Vietnam, Tianjin, Lan Zhou and Wuhan. We even discuss some slight regional nuances despite some of the food looking similar. And yes, all these spots open at 7 a.m., so you know we had to get up early to do it. Let's go. Starting off, this amazing Chinese breakfast food journey, we are about to embark on, Andrew. We got all the top items from Four Seas, which is a Taiwanese breakfast spot. I'm looking at the Shaolong Bao. That was the first thing. Let's go for it. In Taiwan, they have a breakfast version, and then they have a dinner version. A dinner version is more like din tai feng. It's way more juicy. This Andrew is actually dipped in white vinegar. And I often see the breakfast ones are done that way. They don't really care if that skin's tearing apart because there's not that much soup to begin with. Clear vinegar or black vinegar for dumplings, I'm good with. Moving on, basically we got to either go with the phan toans or the dam bings. I'll tell you this, this is actually one of my favorite Taiwanese breakfast items. It has the yo-tow, a.k.a. the fried donut. It has the pork sung. It has preserved vegetables wrapped around sticky rice. This would basically be your Taiwanese breakfast burrito ultimate version. Throw it all in there. That is one of the best phan toans I've had in a long time. I might have to give this one a 5 out of 5. Andrew, we have arrived at the eggy dan section, dan meaning egg. Some people like the regular dan bing. Some people like it with a yo-tow, a fried donut in the middle. They got that egg so perfect. A little bit of salt in there really draws out the flavors more. Andrew, we are looking at Tung yo bings, a.k.a. screen scallion pancakes with egg. I would say you don't need the scallion pancake to have an egg. It doesn't need the egg, but it's cool with it. For me, I thought the egg almost like maybe dampen the flavor a little bit. Almost act as a suppressor. We got to move on, Andrew. Real quick, jiltai hud. This is the green chives egg pocket. You've got fried eggs in there. You've got some fun clear noodle. You've obviously got the leek. The leek pancake. It's not as tasty as a lot of like the Shandong style ones, but it tastes cleaner. Andrew, this is the lobo gal a.k.a. lopako, a.k.a. radish cake with egg. That was a sleeper for me. I didn't think that was going to be that good. No, that was good. Next up, we've got the Shaobing jianurou. I'm enjoying that. It's good. In a way, all you really need is the pick and roll combo right here. All right, you guys, we are zooming through our Taiwanese breakfast crawl. Andrew, we've got the zongzi. You've got to get some of this egg yolk, too, right here. I would recommend breaking up that yolk and getting little bits of it in each bite instead of eating the yolk as whole. $5. Okay. That tastes like a $5 zongzi. But it is just true. The zongzi are not going to be $5. Because there's a lady in New York's Chinatown, Grant and Christie, right outside the subway station who sells her zongzi for $1. And what does she sound like? Yi zong, Yi kwa. And she just does that, like, for three hours straight. Shout out to the zongzi lady. Andrew, the pork and veggie bun, the roubao. You know how I can tell that this is going to be quality is by how much juice was soaked up by the bun. And now the bun is starting to fall apart, but that's a good sign in a way. All right, Andrew, which one are you picking? I'm going to let you pick up these two final pastries. I am going to go with the red bean. That's good because I wanted the black sesame. I know that. Egg yolk pastries. Mmm. This one was good. I'm enjoying this. I think I need to try it. That's good, huh? The black sesame with the egg yolk is good. You like the red bean one better? No. My goodness, we just ran through round one here at Four Seas. The reason why we did it is because it kind of takes a lot of the popular breakfast items from around China and they serve it in Taiwan. Overall, I give Four Seas actually a 4.5. Wow. So they should name themselves 4.5 Seas. All you Taiwanese people out there, you let me know in the comments down below if you still like to dip your food in soybean milk. Next up on our breakfast crawl, we've got the Taiwanese bakery versus the Cantonese Hong Kong bakery. We got to go head up, Andrew. I see the turns I bow. Okay, okay. Hot dog buns. Today, I am still rolling with the original turns I bow from the Hong Kong bakery. Yeah, I got to say, so this was my number one pick to got the job done overall, the best battle with the pineapple buns. If the Taiwanese one does it best, I'm going to give it to them. But the pineapple bun does come from Hong Kong. The Guangzhou one does the best job of having that sugary coating on top. Overall is the best one. Blueberry bun battle. I got a roll with the 85C one on this one. This is just packing the most. It's a fluffy milk bun overall. This is actually one of the strongest buns at 85C, by the way. I actually think Western people would like this. Here we have the Portuguese egg tart battle, aka the po-tot battle. Here we have the Hong Kong po-tot. This is the 85C Taiwanese one. There was some overpowering flavors. It's definitely high quality. The Hong Kong version definitely tastes more like the po-tot you would get in Hong Kong. All right, you guys, we're out of the battle section. I just want to show you guys some of the most famous items at 85C. This is their taro bun. People used to wait in line at Diamond Jamboree and Irvine for so long just to get this. The one that I'm holding in my hand, this is a bowl of chashu bao, which is basically only something you're going to really find at Hong Kong spots, where it has the bowl of bao topping. But the inside is chashu bao. Wow. Okay, guys, in my hand I have a fresh gai-mei bao, aka cocktail bun. This bun of them all is actually one of the most popular ones to eat for breakfast. There's no meat inside. Yet they have some kind of like this coconut filling. All right, you guys, I have to get the cream bun. That's really symbolic of why the Taiwanese bakeries are winning. Cream buns, sometimes they can just be doing too much. Yeah, you know what it is. It's a little too heavy. All right, Andrew, there's no way we're actually getting through all of this. So I just wanted to showcase a few things to people that I really recommend from the Cantonese bakery side. This is a curry pork triangle. So it's basically like a curry pork pastry. And I think this is something that they're only going to have at a Hong Kong bakery. And here I got the spam or ham and egg baguette. Savory items from the Hong Kong bakery. And then Andrew, this almost Cantonese style of angel food cake, it's super light. This is mom's favorite pastry. Wow. Too fluffy. You might have to check this one out. And people are going crazy over this. What you see is you have a scallion egg on the outside. You have a layer of mayo in between the bread and the egg. And then you have pork sung. And then you have jackfruit and mayo on the inside. So there's this sweet, savory, eggy flavor going on. Something else I want to show you guys real quick. This is a mango cake. I mean, how often do you see mango in cake? Cantonese love the fruit cake. Which bakery were you the biggest fan of? I think that if you need a bun to go for breakfast, I think the Hong Kong Cantonese bakeries are going to do the best job of those. Dude, you get yourself a ham and egg, and I'm getting an unsweetened green tea. And I am on my way onto the next section. Next up, Andrew, we've got the traditional Hong Kong breakfast side. Like these style of chung fun, even in Guangzhou, you can only find them at Hong Kong spots. Hong Kong style shrimp chung fun. You guys can tell that the chung fun is fresh because how wiggly and folded it is. Somebody was really folding this by hand. This is not the machine made. The shrimp chung fun is the benchmark item. The next very popular Cantonese breakfast food, David, is the one ton noodles. I know with the Hong Kong spots, the one ton are very big, and they have shrimp and pork just like this one. Let's take a bite. The thing I love about the noodles though is that they're really thin. They're almost like angel hair pasta, except they're cooked al dente. So that's why the texture of the one ton noodle is very unique. Andrew, what do you want to tell the people about chung? Rice porridge is literally one of the oldest dishes that are still eaten today. This is the classic. We got to take a look at this one right here. This one is a paedansou yukchuk, which is a salty pork and thousand year old egg. One of my favorite memories is waking up on Saturday mornings before church and you have the chook and then you have all these little garnishes and side dishes, the pickled vegetables on the side. I like chicken chook and I actually like the fish chook a lot, which we have coming up right here, fish ball cilantro congee. This is a very simple dish. You can see you have shredded ginger. You have the fish filet in here. This is actually a fish ball with cilantro in it. I think Taiwanese are most known for it is putting the yam in the congee. Just when the yam is soft in it and just, I don't know, it's just really good. This I believe is either a haka or a chiao dish due to the preserved fish. And also maybe due to the fact, I think that's a mixture of noodles. Yeah. Mmm. This is a very legit traditional flavor with the salted fish that I personally am not that big of a fan of, but I'm glad he recommended it. But not least, Andrew, this is satay beef with instant noodles. So it has little bits of dried seafood in there. It's a little bit spicy. It kind of has a light barbecue flavor to it. It's really one of the most delicious Chinese sauces, I got to say beef satay. I would say that the Cantonese cuisine specifically has the most diverse sub types of breakfast because you've got the mean joke, which is the one time mean congee section. You've got the British fusion section on top of that, almost like Guangzhou style foods like Guangzhou style Cheng funds that you can't even find in Hong Kong. So this Chinese breakfast excursion must continue on to the next section. And we're moving on. We're more looking at young Hong Kong food. Yeah. I mean, this is really what you see people in Hong Kong eating a lot when you go out for breakfast. The breakfast instant noodle here. Yeah, the gong zai min. The gong zai min with the spicy sausage. I think we got to lead off with that because that was the one I was looking at the most. Sure, man. This is the instant noodle soup gong zai min. It's delicious, but it kind of feels like something that you could make at home. Like your mom might whip it up. I'm going to give it a 4.5. Wow, wow. You really like this dish. I give it a 3.5 out of five. I don't fiend for it in the same way that David does. Here we have this incredible pile of chow mein. I would say the younger people, they're into it too. But for older people and this is like a 10 out of 10 banger. It just has sprouts, tosses some soy sauce. I want to say egg noodles. They're very thin egg noodles. They're actually really tasty and I love the texture. This kind of brings you back to why you love chow mein. Now we have to try the Hong Kong style. This was kind of, for me, the first time I had this in Hong Kong with the peanut sauce and hoi xin. So as you can see, it's kind of mixed in together here because they know you're going to dip it in both anyways. Breakfast chung fun, plain. This chung fun has green onions and the dried shrimp. Ha mai chung fun. Yet again, a simple dish, but surprisingly delicious. Moving on, we have the heavily Western-influenced Spam and egg, ham and egg, however you guys want it. But it's always going to come with the crust cut off. This is actually a really good version of a spam and egg sandwich. I think it's funny how they just don't eat crust in Hong Kong, like they just, they always cut it off on the sandwiches. Last but not least, oh my gosh, we're on our pastries. And we've come back to the core. The fall all yow. The slab of butter really sets everything apart. It just adds that kind of sweetness of the bun. It overall works out really well. Pineapple bun with butter. That's not regular butter. That is sweet butter. Wow, that butter is super sweet. Of course, last but not least, Andrew, we have the authentic Hong Kong egg tart, dan tat. This one's gonna have a more pastry crust, super layered. Everything's just gonna crumble off your mouth basically when you bite into it, guys. Check this out, this is the dan tat, the egg tart. I like it better than the Taiwanese one that we had earlier in the day. This really captured that egg custard flavor. When it comes to the phrase like Chinese breakfast, what does that even mean? Because there are so many different styles from different places, and they eat it for different reasons because of the climate, because of what their general activities are gonna be. It was really cool to see the diversity all within the 626, all within one day. Next round, I am happy to introduce on this channel once again, the Chiew Jiao Noodle. Yours is a Chiew Jiao Chow Mean, basically your Chiew Jiao House Special. This is the pork rib noodle. So we have a different soup base here. That soup might be a black bean juice. It does have black beans. We're talking about a black bean pork rib gravy noodle. When I get a bite of the jalapeno, the fried onion, and the pork all in one bite, that's what I'm looking for right here, look. Some of the fish cake and some of the fried onions, I would say maybe that's more Vietnamese, but then of course the wonton noodles looks more Chinese. So it's just a mixture, and let me tell you this, it's a beautiful mixture. It's very simple but tasty. They gave us the super fresh and fluffy Yau Tiew in here. Oh, I got another one here. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They gave me an extra dip just for the Yau Tiew. By itself, it's just like a fried dough stick. Like you dip it in the soup and it soaps everything up and then the flavors mix together. Really delicious to be honest. Chiew Jiao food is also known for its small appetizers. We've got fried wontons. Wow. Half of it is chewy because of the meat and soft and then other half is really light and crispy. So you're getting both textures in one bite. At one point in history, Andrew, people who spoke Cantonese, people who spoke Hakka and people who spoke Chiew Jiao were considered like rival tribes in the South. Hakkas are now considered pretty much a subgroup of Cantonese, but at one point Hakka people and Cantonese people actually had wars with each other. Let's just wash it down with some veggies while we're waiting for the next round of food to be done. That oyster sauce is tasty. How often do you beast over a side of veggies? I don't think like Chiew Jiao people out there need me to tell them that the food is good, but in case you guys didn't know, Chiew Jiao food is delicious. That wraps it up for the Chiew Jiao breakfast noodle section with delicious side dishes. Our next round is gonna be from Tianjin, Northern China. All right, you guys, we are in front of Garage Kitchen representing the city of Tianjin. Things that you're not gonna find at the Taiwanese spot are things like a jianbing. What are some other things they have? Maybe some of the dojo. Kind of a little bit more of soupy tofu dishes. So guys, we're gonna see what kind of traditional Northern Chinese breakfast items we can get. Andrew, moving right along to our Chinese breakfast extravaganza. We have landed in Tianjin. Gotta go with the Tianjin Baozi. It's almost like a Shaolongbao Baozi. The Tianjin Baozi. They're pretty much look like enlarged Shaolongbaos bursting at the seams. Guys, look, all those brown spots, that's actually just the soup that's making it closer and closer to the surface of the skin. That means it's about to break. Tianjin Baozi, number one. We are blazing through, Andrew. I wanna try that. Once you look at the bottom, it's starting to look like a funnel cake. Look at this brown sugar bean. I'll tell you this, how crispy the brown sugar is on top is impressive. If you guys know that desserts in Asia traditionally are very mildly sweet, this is no different. This is very mild. It's almost like you taste more of the fried thing in just maybe 20% of the sugar. We gotta get into this jambing. It looks very authentic. Oh my God, it smells authentic. Oh my God. This particular jambing here is not my favorite. I think it's partially because actually the yo-tiao inside is a little bit burnt. I think that's actually what happens. Yo, Andrew, I'm not gonna lie. Northern Chinese breakfast, like we said, to the uninitiated, there's gonna be a gap to bridge to make this mainstream in America. We might be many notches away from closing that gap. But first, this is massive, bro. Look at this. There's nothing else. Just pork, sung, an egg, and a huge mantou. How does it compare to the Shaobing, bro? Bro, you gotta be a 200 pounder. Yo, pop up some pictures of the guys you think that would like this, bro. Would it be that guy, Andrew, who drinks the beers on fire, Shaopanzas? Let me get a bite of this. Oh, man. You know what I mean? I feel like that one fat Chinese baby. Dude, compressing the mantou was like compressing boost. Like Adidas boost cushion. That was like Zumex foam. Last but not least, in the Northern Chinese breakfast section, Andrew, let's go for the dojur and then the lamb soup. You think I get Chinese points? You're gonna find out that that tastes very similar to a dish you've already had. It's hot and sour soup. Hot and sour soup. It's cool. Wow. It's kind of like a hot and sour soup version of dojur. So it's really not bad, so. I like it. Tastes like a healthier version of hot and sour soup. Dojur, hao chur. I knew I was going to like that a lot more than I thought. Yeah? This tastes very similar to the yangtang that we had in the hu tongs. From Inner Mongolia, it really does taste like it. It's not bad. I like it. They did a good job. They did a good job. Yeah, it probably tastes actually better than the hu tong one, only because the hu tong was so authentic. It was like a little too funky, but this one, they watered it down a little bit for like the mass market. Heading right along on our Chinese breakfast food crawl, we are in the Wuhan province, and this is what they really eat there. This is the hot, dry breakfast noodles rujanmian. This is popular for breakfast. It's mostly a mixture of really thick sesame sauce. It has like this kind of dark soy sauce, and then it has pickled peppers on top. Interestingly enough, it doesn't look like much. No, it looks really simple. But guys, trust me, like we've had a lot of different noodle dishes, and this one definitely stands out and there's a reason why it's famous. Wuhan rujanmian. Man, I'm excited. I'm glad we each got our own, because this is just... The chewiness of those noodles and kind of how the sesame sauce kind of sticks onto the noodle. It's covering everything. I could have even used maybe a little bit more chili pepper. This is just really simple, but like tasty. For this particular Wuhan rujanmian dish, I gotta give it a four out of five. Next, we're heading down to the south in Guangzhou to have breakfast, and here we have a bunch of dishes from Yinji Tong Fun. It's a famous Guangzhou breakfast chain, it specializes in chang fun. This is actually the most traditional style right here. I remember when we were in Guangzhou, they love putting gigantic pieces of lettuce in the chang fun. I have the beef and vegetable and shrimp one. As you can see, it is packed with so much ingredients that it's actually kind of hard to keep it together, so it kind of becomes like a just ball of rice noodles. Guangzhou chang fun, aka rice wrap noodle. This type of chang fun, where it's a thinner layer, it's a lot more floppy and squiggly and wavy, and it kind of folds on top of itself. I personally like this style better than the dim sum one. Whoa! I always thought the dim sum one, it was the rice noodles were too thick and it didn't have enough filling. Next up, in Guangzhou. They love Luo Maikai, Luo Mi Ji. Andrew, how do you compare this to zongzi? It's definitely similar, but I think the rice is stickier. It's probably has more sauce. They always have the Chinese sausage in there. Luo Maikai, Luo Mi Ji. They have probably been eating this for breakfast in Guangzhou for like hundreds, if not a thousand years. I think because it's sticky rice, maybe it doesn't last as long as the zongzi. Also, zongzi are wrapped with like six different layers. Given this Luo Maikai, 3.5 out of five. Last but not least, Andrew, you've got the curry fish balls. Right here, I've got chashu fond. This is really good. It feels like I could say that this is more of a breakfast chashu, only because it's less sweet than the other chashus. I don't know if they purposely did it like that, or maybe it's just this particular recipe. It could be Andrew, because there are breakfast Shaolong Bao's that are clearly different in Taiwan. So this could be the breakfast version of chashu. I'm not mad if I eat this for breakfast in Guangzhou, bro. Look at this, half fat, half meat, very clearly. For curry fish balls, that's really good. I give that a four out of five. You're saying you give that a four out of five as a guy who's not generally a fan of curry fish balls? I never see you order those. I never get curry fish balls, but this is a really good version. Moving off the coast of China, Andrew, we are headed to the Northwest, Lanzhou, the land of noodles. We have three types of Lanzhou lamian, AKA Lanzhou ramen, Lanzhou hand-pulled noodles. This is what they eat for breakfast. This is Lanzhou lamian for breakfast. I think it's cool that they don't really have a distinction between what is like breakfast food and what is lunch and even dinner food. Yeah, not all cultures actually have distinct breakfast only foods. I mean, considering breakfast is supposed to be the most important part of your day, why only limit it to certain foods? But I am excited to try this lamb noodle. That lamb flavor is kicking in that noodle dish. So I would say actually this is one of my favorite just because of the flavor that's coming through the lamb meat. For breakfast, they actually also have rojambua. Rojambua are the pulled pork sandwiches. These are super good. This is rojambua, AKA, you know, some people call it the Chinese hamburger. I could see eating that for breakfast, man. You're on your way. Last but not least, Andrew, we have things that they would eat in Sichuan. The Hongyou Chaoshou, the red oil wonton, is something that they do eat in the mornings of Sichuan. It really gives you that little spicy kick to tingle all your taste buds and your sensories and your brain and whatnot. And what thing is ever not spicy in Sichuan? Yeah, even for breakfast, they eat something kind of spicy. Do you taste a little bit of vinegar and a little bit of sweetness coming through? That's good. The Sichuan spicy wonton is one of my favorites. Wrapping up our Northwestern slash Western breakfast, we've got the shirbing. This is something that's really popular in the North and Northwest of China, shirbing. My mind was telling me no, but my taste buds, my body undulations undulating underneath the wave, told me to keep eating. The more and more I film these videos, the more I learn about Chinese breakfast. One thing I got to say when I said that Lanzhou food has some Mongolian influence, that means we got to see Mongolian wrestler J. Shu. Woo! Go at some of this food. Mongolian John. While some regions eat specific dishes for breakfast and some don't, what does it mean to have foods created for different times of the day? Is it as simple as just sticking to tradition? Are some foods designed to energize you in the morning? Maybe it's a symbol of some extra organized infrastructure. Listen, I don't know. But I think that if there's anything to take away from how excited we can be when we find out pancakes are being served at 1 a.m., I think it's that some breakfast foods can be just as, if not more delicious, later on in the day. And man, I just wish you could order a good fantuan at like 7 p.m. somewhere. That'd be lit. Eat two pieces at once. Man, say less. Oh, you gotta get some rice in there, hurry. Scoop the rice and the egg, and the egg. I don't know if some people don't like the fattiness in the meat, but sign me up for the fat on the meat at all times, man. Sign them up for the fatties.