I am in Kunming, which is the biggest city

and the capital city of Yunnan province in China

and today I'm going to take you on a Chinese

street food tour, we're going to eat some

of the local specialties,

so I'm excited to share this entire day

of Chinese street food with you.

(electronic music)

- Morning guys,

I'm in a bit of a rush this morning.

- Let me introduce you to Jerry,

he's going to be taking us around today.

It is bright and cold this morning, it is about 8:45 am.

(market salespersons speaking Mandarin)

We have made it to the biggest market

in downtown Kunming, we've got to walk through this gate.

Oh, look at those mushrooms.

If I come down here I can actually

smell that mushroomey aroma.

There's truffles here, there's some Matsutake mushrooms,

oh yeah there's, ah, I remember seeing those before.

I don't know what most of these mushrooms are but

wow you can smell the mushroom aroma.

(market noise)

(foreign language)

- [Jerry] Special type of red--

- We're stopping first to eat, it's uh,

well, you can see that there are bees all over

and you can, so you can tell it's something sweet.

But it looks like rice, there's both

a pink version and a white version,

we've got both to try, uh,

I think it's a type of like fermented rice, sweet.

How is that?

- Beautiful.

- [Mark] Get a little bit of the meat and,

- [Jerry] Get the liquid, get liquid.

This is important.

- Mm, oh yeah.

It has a little bit of an alcoholic taste but it's sweet.

It's kind of like a, a rice pudding,

but you can still feel the kernels of rice

and then you've got the rice wine flavor of it.

Mm, oh they do have slightly a little

bit of a different taste.

I think the red one, is a little sweeter.

And then the white one is a little more sour.

(speaking Mandarin)

Okay they have some big huge pans

of spicy chicken feet over here and

people are kind of just rummaging through them

picking out chicken feet, um,

but she's also giving samples, so

she just handed me a sample of chicken feet.

Oh, it's a little cold.

But, for chicken feet,

you just sort of gnaw on it,

you eat all of that cartilagey

stuff and you can actually kind of crack

through the bones as well.

Chicken feet have never been my favorite,

but that sauce is pretty awesomely good.

It's like lemony, oh you can see lemon grass in here.

The flavor is pretty good,

but yeah it's kind of like a jellyish,

gelatinous skin in texture.

There are some little knuckles and

some little bones in that guy.

Chicken feet are not my personal favorite

but that sauce, that marinade was absolutely delicious.

That's the fish mint, right?

That looks amazing.

For chili oil, you need to make that chili oil.

(speaking Mandarin)

One of the great things about this market

is that you can just walk through

and people offer you samples.

Oh, that's delicious.

Those little crunchy shrimp, they're crunchy,

nicely salted, you can taste the chili flavor in there.

And it's almost like a, oh yeah,

it tastes like bell peppers.

(frying sound)

I saw, I actually heard the dumplings sizzling

and this is a type of, it's like a

half moon shaped dumpling.

He's grilling them, or cooking them over

the hot griddle and he, first he

takes the raw dumplings,

he lays them onto the hot griddle.

He poured on a little bit of oil

so they sizzle,

and so they both cook and fry sort of at the same time.

They're hot and fresh.

This looks delicious and smells fantastic.

I think it's mostly filled with,

I think I can smell some chives in there.

Oh, that's tasty.

Oh, it's a little bit greasy,

but, yeah that's mostly chive I think

and maybe

I don't know if it's egg inside of it

and then the wrapper is crispy and gummy.

Yeah, that's really tasty.

Mm, nice and salty and oily.

(foreign language)

- [Jerry] Okay, yes.

Oh, this is it, this is her shop.

She's selling pickles, she wanted to

see herself in the camera.

- Oh, she's so friendly, she's so nice.

And I think right next door we're

going to try some of the local roast duck.

- [Jerry] He's the owner of the duck stall,

she's the owner of all the pickles.

- [Mark] Okay.

Yeah, something I was really interested to try

in Yunnan is a local style of roast duck

which some people say, it compares to the

one of the most famous roast duck like from Beijing.

But this is the local one from Yinyang

and they're just little small ducks,

they're roasting them right here.

It's a busy shop.

The owner said you have to buy a whole duck

but we're going to try to get a taste test.

The owner is really friendly.

On second thought, we have decided that it

is very necessary to get ourselves a whole duck.

They're pretty small.

The ducks here are selling out so fast.

Very good, very good, they're selling out so fast here.

They're just, like this whole cabinet was full

when we arrived here and now there's only four ducks left.

She has very kindly given me a plastic glove

to taste a piece right now.

Absolutely beautiful, the skin is perfectly golden, okay.

Oh, oh wow.

- My god, even without salt, it's good enough.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh it's so incredibly moist.

That's unbelievable, it's moist,

it's not, it's not dry at all.

Um, the skin is crispy,

that's really properly good.

More ducks are coming.

(techno music and market sounds)

So as we're standing here eating the duck

we ran out of ducks and then they took

a fresh batch out of the oven

and now they're adding more ducks in.

And by the way, he told us

they sell about 700 ducks per day.

I'm in this just very tight little, little space.

That is just sensational

and there's nothing better than standing here,

watching them make it with the ovens

then freshly chopping it up and just snacking on it.

Wow.

That is really, a seriously good way to roast a duck.

It's actually mild in flavor but I think,

I think what's really keeping me here

is the actual ducks that they're using

which do not taste like overly fatty,

they taste a little more free range.

The meat is literally not dry at all.

Like duck can sometimes be.

Mm, just super.

(foreign language)

What a duck.

Talk about egg decisions.

There's about a dozen different eggs you can choose from.

From free range, from wild to goose, to duck

to thousand year, to transparent, to salted.

Yeah, they have it all, every type

of egg you could possibly want.

(foreign language)

You can choose your own pear?

- [Jerry] You can choose your own pear.

The smaller, the tastier.

More taste.

- [Mark] Jerry found some of these pickled pears

and they're supposed to be very good for you,

very healthy, especially good for your

digestive system and for your lungs

and Jerry told me that the smaller ones

are better, so I got a little small one.

This is like the size of a really small plum

but it's a pear, pickled it's just,

it's just soaking in its pickled juices.

Mm, oh.

It's a little bit of a salty pickle

but then sweet, oh, okay.

It's a little bit of a salty pickle,

the pear has a dryness to it as well.

- Get some sweet potato.

- [Mark] Sweet potato.

(foreign language)

And really juicy too.

Micah, Micah, how's that sweet potato?

I'm not the only one that is enjoying the market.

Micah's loving the market

and this market is huge, it's a sprawling market,

it just keeps on going and there's just

mountains of food to eat here.

Okay, cool.

- [Jerry] There you go!

- Cheers, Jerry.

Next up at the market, we're trying

a local Yunnanese beverage drink,

little rice noodles and then there's also

some kind of jelly which he adds to it as well.

With some syrup and then she mixes it all up and

this is the drink.

Cheers.

Also, not forgetting, you get an Angry Birds cup too.

Which is, which is a bonus.

Okay, that's, that's really really sweet.

A little too sweet for me,

but it tastes like that, like roasted brown sugar

type of sweetness, really really jellyish

jelly that you can suck up through a straw.

Totally different.

There's another noodle shop that's absolutely bustling

and there's a specific type of tofu rice noodle,

that is very common in Kunming that we've got to try

so we're, we're stopping here for one more

bowl of rice noodles.

(foreign language)

- [Jerry] Do like local now, yeah?

- [Mark] Yeah,

oh, you can smell the fermented soy beans.

- [Jerry] Best dish you can ever have.

- You basically come here and find an empty stool

wherever you can find a stool

and the most famous thing that you have to try here

and this is very common in Kunming is tofu noodles.

I've had tofu before, I've had rice noodles before

but I can't say that I've had tofu rice noodles so

this is the first for me.

Once you start mixing it, the tofu just kind of like

minces literally into your noodles.

Okay that just splattered into my eye.

So the noodles taste like they've sort of like absorbed

some of that broth, they're kind of like

like, um, swollen full of that broth

and you do taste the fermented soy beans in there.

The tofu just sort of melts in your mouth

you don't even, the

tofu is sort of in your subconscious,

you barely even notice the tofu.

Oh, hey Micah.

Okay, Micah wants to, Micah wants to come join in.

Okay.

Okay, Micah let's just taste the tofu.

Want to just taste a bite of only that tofu

to see how it is.

But you've got to like really pick out a little piece.